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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77090 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   THE
+                               PEDIGREE OF
+                                 FASCISM
+
+                     A POPULAR ESSAY ON THE WESTERN
+                         PHILOSOPHY OF POLITICS
+
+
+                                   BY
+                               ALINE LION
+                       _Lady Margaret Hall, Oxon._
+
+
+                                 LONDON:
+                              SHEED & WARD
+                       31, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 4
+
+
+
+
+                                   TO
+                           JOHN WALTER, ESQ.,
+                        TO WHOSE QUESTIONS I OWE
+                      THE FIRST IDEA OF THIS BOOK.
+
+                                             A. L.
+
+
+                         _First Published_, 1927
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+                                 Part I
+
+                  THE POLITICAL ANTECEDENTS OF FASCISM
+
+        CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+
+     I. Is Fascism a Revolution?                                       3
+
+    II. Liberalism in Italy                                           10
+
+   III. Nationalism and Socialism                                     23
+
+    IV. The European War and its Effects                              37
+
+
+                                Part II
+
+                  PHILOSOPHICAL ANTECEDENTS OF FASCISM
+
+     I. Philosophical Antecedents                                     58
+
+    II. Humanism and Renaissance                                      70
+
+   III. The Seventeenth Century                                       92
+
+    IV. The Seventeenth Century in France                            114
+
+     V. Giambattista Vico                                            125
+
+    VI. Illuminism in England and France                             137
+
+   VII. Nineteenth Century in Italy                                  154
+
+  VIII. Benedetto Croce                                              170
+
+    IX. Giovanni Gentile                                             189
+
+     X. Benito Mussolini                                             211
+
+        Index                                                        235
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR’S NOTE
+
+
+I should, perhaps, say from the first that I am neither Italian nor
+Fascist. Yet, having lived in Italy from 1913 to 1927, I cannot but be
+conscious of the fact that the country has undergone a deep change,
+and have come to the conclusion that it is a change for the better.
+My purpose in writing this book has been to bring to the knowledge of
+people possessed of a fair amount of general knowledge, the conclusions
+that might be formed by a specialist with regard to this change and
+the value of it. Incidentally I have endeavoured to discourage both
+those who would import Fascism, as it flourishes in Italy, into other
+countries, and those who would hinder the spread of that philosophy
+which, I hold, is its basis.
+
+It is necessary to avoid, when possible, definitely partisan sources of
+information; 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
+failed.
+
+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 it. I am also most grateful to the following whom I have
+consulted as to historical or philosophical accuracy—Professor G. A.
+Smith, Professor G. C. Webb, Mrs. Anne MacCormick, Miss Jamison, Miss
+Mary Coate and Mr. R. G. Collingwood.
+
+                                                        ALINE LION.
+
+ _Lady Margaret Hall,
+   Oxford._
+
+
+
+
+Part I
+
+THE POLITICAL ANTECEDENTS OF FASCISM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IS FASCISM A REVOLUTION?
+
+
+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
+world. Strange to say, however, the light thrown by most of these
+publications fails to illuminate the points most interesting to
+foreigners. This is probably due first of all to the fact that most
+of the writers have written either for or against it; moreover, this
+movement, being peculiarly Italian, is difficult for a foreign mind to
+grasp. In any case, it is a fact that in spite of all the good or bad
+will of the journalists this revolution is far from being understood.
+The lack of intelligent information regarding it is felt everywhere;
+and it would be difficult to say whether the misrepresentation is
+greater among those who admire it and, seeing in it a universal remedy
+for all modern woes, want to introduce its method in other countries;
+or among those who consider it just as a matter of incidental and local
+politics. I shall try to put it in its historical setting, and I shall
+consider myself fortunate if I can throw light on its relation to the
+political past of Italy, and to the present political conceptions of
+other countries.
+
+The first question that invariably arises is whether Fascism is or is
+not a revolution. This, however, must be answered by another: what is
+a revolution? No word stands in greater need of a sound, common-sense
+definition, yet a definition of it stands on the very threshold of any
+impartial research on Fascism.
+
+Is revolution merely a change of government? This is not sufficient.
+If it were, the fall of Louis Philippe from the throne of France would
+be a revolution; yet it is obviously by a license that one speaks of
+it as the Revolution of ’48. The form of government may change without
+any substantial alteration of the régime. Then does revolution imply a
+change of régime? Yes, but, again, what is exactly a change of régime?
+
+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 Citizen, a new conception of political reality.
+It is, therefore, a doctrine, a system, and as such is philosophy
+expressing itself in history. This admitted, it is necessary to guard
+against the abstract bent. of philosophical researches. The deepest
+currents of speculative thought would never bring about a single change
+of government by themselves; but then they do not exist by themselves.
+It is only in the synthesis of history that we find them at play in the
+world of historical reality, which is what it is because thoughts and
+deeds are one.
+
+The March on Rome did certainly mark the confluence of two streams
+coming to mingle their waters between the banks of the Tiber. One was
+torrential, the impulse coming from a fifty years’ accumulation of
+economic and political mistakes in Italy. The other was deeper, slower,
+the contribution of centuries of Italian philosophy enriched by the
+intellectual thought of all Europe. The torrent is represented by the
+political antecedents of Fascism: the deep stream by the philosophical
+antecedents of Fascism.
+
+To illustrate my figure a period of history presents itself as an
+example. It does not correspond exactly to the present movement in
+Italy, but it is at any rate familiar to one and all: the French
+Revolution. We see there, also, the typical stream of philosophical
+life carving a deep bed for the river to come: in the minds of
+intellectuals, in the consciousness of the people, abstract theories
+or works of artistic vulgarisation, prepare the bed for the river
+that will become, under the impulsion of actual circumstances, an
+irresistible torrent. So that this revolution whose intellectual
+pedigree makes it the offspring of Descartes, and Hobbes, of Grotius,
+Locke and the English political writers, besides the Encyclopædists,
+Voltaire and Rousseau, has to the highest degree the qualities that
+make it an element of universal life, and a fertilising principle
+in the politics of all Europe. On the other hand it receives,
+undoubtedly from the economic and political conditions of France, the
+particular determinations that distinguish it as French, as belonging
+to the eighteenth century. The form it took actually between 1790
+and 1795 could not be introduced anywhere else; under that form it
+was exclusively French, because—we must insist on the point—it had
+received it as its actual and concrete determination from its immediate
+antecedents.
+
+Actuation, realisation, concrete life, whatever the field we move in,
+whether we consider politics, artistic creation, or natural life, it
+requires two elements, the one universal, the other particular. Now
+history shows that the universal element spreads, notwithstanding
+frontiers and the will of men. Its force of expansion is a quality
+common to all ideas; but the particular is not to be imported, and
+it is as impossible to introduce it in foreign lands as it is to
+confine the other to any land. Hence the political applications of
+the same theories in different countries differ from each other as
+do the countries themselves. These differences, economic, political,
+religious, intellectual, 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 nations.
+
+The Italian patriots at the end of the eighteenth century were very
+few, and all, without exception, intellectuals. Some belonged to
+the higher or lower aristocracy, some belonged to the upper middle
+class, but all were scholars, men of the widest reading. It would be
+difficult to find nowadays a body of men so well informed. For one
+thing, production has increased immensely and life has lost the leisure
+that allowed intellectual tastes to be satisfied. The fact remains
+that at the close of that century Italy could boast of men aware of
+its inferior position, of its non-existence as a nation. Such men were
+ready to try anything, and did try to imitate the French revolution in
+so far as they could by founding the small republics that lasted one
+season or two, dying away like plants of distant countries, when they
+are planted in our soil. Their zeal, however, was not sterile, they
+failed in their immediate purpose, because they wanted to introduce
+not only ideas but the actual form in which these were expressed. A
+constitution, a battle, the plan of a town, a project of economic
+reform, each of these things is an expression endowed with an æsthetic
+value varying with the degree of perfection attained by the man
+who worked it out, and gave the idea that prompted him a suitable
+realisation. But the essential quality of the æsthetic creator is to be
+on a particular theme, the voice of his time and of the body of men he
+represents in his act of creation. The men of the revolution were by no
+means fair representatives of the people of France; but when they drew
+up the constitution they certainly realised on the whole the desiderata
+of most Frenchmen. Giving expression, giving form to the ideas that had
+agitated the whole century, they did it in the only way that could be a
+French way in those days.
+
+Now the will of Napoleon, when he wished Italy to be politically a
+copy of France, was a very empirical will, and the men who tried
+to carry out his wishes because they loved Italy were not any more
+transcendental. In this question they took no notice of what were
+the spiritual and political conditions of their country, and yet
+surely a constitution is an expression of mind. In all this however
+their blunder paved the way to a better understanding of the matter.
+Everybody realised that in order to have anything like an independent
+government the first thing was to be a great and unified country. When
+the ideas that had led in France to the Revolution and Republic were
+developed in Italy, according to the mentality of the great Italians,
+they blended with all that was particular to Italy and expressed
+themselves in an Italian movement: the Risorgimento. It cannot be over
+emphasised, for the importance of the point is great; the same ideas
+that caused the Republic to become for more than a century the form of
+French government, gave birth to the Kingdom of Italy.
+
+Roughly, the same can be said of Fascism. Its ideas and doctrine
+will spread whether they meet with favour or hostility, because they
+are Italian just as Liberalism is English, that is to say they are
+Italian in their methods of actuation and perfectly universal in their
+philosophical content.
+
+“Equality, fraternity, liberty,” was the eighteenth century cry, and
+it might be the cry of the Fascists. Their revolutionary contribution
+to the history of politics is the denial of natural rights, natural
+rights being understood as something the determination of which is
+anterior to the birth of man, as the quality of a cabbage or a rose
+tree is anterior to its birth. Right is so narrowly linked to duty that
+for this school of thought it cannot be anterior to consciousness.
+Therefore man must be considered and rated in the State only according
+to spiritual value and actual economic or intellectual interest.
+
+The natural rights of man are denied. The spiritual value, entitling
+man to citizenship, cannot be acquired by him once for all and enjoyed
+without effort. He must daily and continuously be working for the
+vindication of the rights he has won, and for the conquest of those
+he seeks. Citizenship is not a chattel lying in a man’s possession:
+its only reality is bound to the performing of the duties correlative
+of rights. There Fascism meets with all our religious communities;
+in all Israelite and Christian Communities or Churches the new-born
+child is admitted on the pledge, taken for him by sponsors, that he
+will discharge his duties and accept the law of the community of which
+he becomes a member. Such a pledge he has to confirm on his coming to
+adult state.
+
+Citizenship becomes, finally, with the whole of political reality, a
+moral, spiritual and Christian reality, and the only real equality of
+men can be attained in a State in which each man is rated according
+to actual value. For citizenship, taken as a birthright of man, is a
+remains of Pagan times, when it was the lot of some to be born slaves
+and of some to be born citizens.
+
+
+
+
+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
+universal. It is therefore necessary to trace, or at least attempt to
+trace, this pedigree in spite of the difficulty of the task.
+
+Fascism presents itself at first as being essentially the expression of
+the national consciousness of Italy. So it is; but it must be stated
+at once that it is the national consciousness recently acquired by the
+people of Italy, which, like an uncontrollable force, has worked itself
+out, taking Fascism as its expression. 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 country. The truth is,
+that though it is practically the epilogue of that drama, Fascism
+cannot be identified with the Risorgimento. 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 do. The wars of independence were due to the initiative of an
+aristocratic minority; whose aristocratic and intellectual qualities
+distinguished them and perhaps ensured their success. The leaders
+of the Risorgimento were not hampered by anything like a popular
+following; and their eventual agreement as to what was best for their
+cause was always made certain by this intellectual selectness. All were
+able, like Garibaldi and Mazzini, to see things as they were and to act
+accordingly, not only to the extent of sacrificing their lives but of
+sacrificing their dearest ideals as well. Republicans, they accepted
+monarchy; ministers, of their own free will they relinquished power to
+place it in hands they thought more fit than their own to realise their
+dream; staunch Catholics, during their life they fought the Church
+in its temporal politics, in an age when the best educated priests
+would not admit and could not even see the possibility of distinction
+between temporal and spiritual power. Only religious and idealistic men
+can realise by how much such sacrifices surpassed for them the gift
+of money, liberty, or even life. There is one English word that sums
+up what these Italian liberators were, whether noblemen, solicitors,
+writers, professors, officers, doctors: they were _gentlemen_ of good
+classical education and wide reading who had assimilated what was best
+in Europe. The common people, one cannot insist too much upon the
+fact, remained indifferent at best, and that only as long as their
+interests were not affected; the lower middle class were hostile, 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 things,
+were openly against any change. How could such people feel the need or
+see the possibility of building up a nation, one nation, out of the
+harlequin coat presented by the map of Italy?
+
+Thus a free hand was guaranteed to the small number of Italian
+gentlemen then endowed with heroic souls. They had nobody to consult,
+they were a State in themselves, a State without a lower class.
+Perhaps for the last time in the history of the world we see there
+realised the classical republic without a political plebs. No wonder
+that they worked a miracle; they belonged politically to different
+states, and yet by the force of their ideal they attained that oneness
+of conscience which gives personality and reality to a nation. The
+spirit of the nation existed before its material realisation; there
+is no better illustration of the new notion that Fascism is bringing
+to the fore in the world of concrete history, that of the nation as
+a spiritual reality, independent of geographical and ethnographical
+determinations. Never in history has this notion received a more
+complete and actual realisation than in this first dawn of the national
+life in Italy. The reality of the nation had its first affirmation in
+the sacrifice of these men, for it is obvious that no sober man would
+give up life, liberty, wealth, for something unreal; and, in fact, the
+reality of Italy as a nation ceased to be questioned then and there.
+
+Every advantage, of course, has its disadvantage. As the pioneers of
+the Risorgimento did not need the people, they overlooked all the
+problems that the necessity of obtaining popular collaboration would
+have compelled them to face. All economic and social questions were
+overlooked except by a very few; the spiritual education of the lower
+class was not even suggested in their programme of action. Their aims
+were the independence and the political unity of Italy, and to that
+goal they directed their hearts and minds indifferent to the needs of
+practical life, and to all the obstacles that seemed to make their
+dream a theme for the lyrical effusions of poets. In fact they were
+poets, all of them, for they created a reality out of an ideal vision
+that was more an intuition than an intellectual conception. The very
+manner in which they carried out their revolution was æsthetic more
+than practical; they shut their eyes to all that was in contradiction
+to their dream, exactly as the artist does who strives to express an
+intuition through material realisation, and in order not to let the
+objective world crowd his mind deliberately shuts his eyes to it, to
+everything that is not his present ideal.
+
+The economic and social questions could not in any case have been
+faced, still less dealt with, as long as the nation was not a political
+reality. Any attempt would have been sterile and perhaps even harmful.
+First, 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 population, 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 Italy. It was, moreover, expedient to hold to the
+singleness of purpose that was more likely to make action coherent all
+through the peninsula; only such singleness of aim made it possible to
+men of so different temperament and breeding as professional men and
+noblemen, Tuscans and Sicilians, Freemasons and ardent Catholics, to
+think and therefore to act in positive harmony.
+
+When a bullet has hit the bull’s-eye it has fulfilled its purpose, and
+stays there in helpless immobility or falls to the ground a useless
+thing. It was meant for that shot, and is bound to be purposeless when
+it has made its mark. The generations of Carlo Alberto and Mazzini, of
+Vittorio Emmanuele and Cavour, had certainly hit the mark when Rome had
+become the capital of Italy. 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 task? Or could it be that the realisation
+of the new State should bring, as its immediate consequence, a
+ready-made generation of statesmen? Indeed, if there is one thing that
+cannot be produced by a magic wand, it is a body of able and trained
+political men.
+
+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 life. Inspiration and idealism proved out of
+place, and although theirs was, what would have been called in England
+or in France, a Conservative government, they had to rely on a very
+strange electoral body. While they did not extend the vote at once,
+they found in the middle class a set of Arrivists with an imperative
+egoism that was to prove the curse of political life in Italy. It
+is difficult for an English, French, or American citizen to realise
+the kind of problems with which these men were beset. Above all it
+is difficult to an Englishman; England has had five or six centuries
+of political experience, 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 legislature. In Italy, on the other hand,
+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 film.
+He passes from childhood to youth, and on to manhood, maturity and old
+age in a couple of hours. If he actually could crowd all experience
+into a couple of years the proportion would be better; 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
+centuries.
+
+Now no student of the history of politics, or even of art, 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
+arise, and that out of criticism comes the idea, confused at first,
+then clearer and clearer, of the form that is to supersede it. This is,
+in fact, the process of dialectic: it is the dialectic of history; and
+in spite of the wish to avoid any special terminology, it is better to
+call the process by its own name. At first people struggle to reach a
+certain form of government, and that moment of dialectic ends when the
+form is reached; they then apply it more and more fully and, during
+its application, discover its limitations; this second moment ends in
+criticism of the whole theory; finally they set themselves to remedy
+its shortcomings. This last moment coincides in the people with the
+free consciousness of dissatisfaction, and in the leaders with a clear
+understanding of the new tendencies to be satisfied, so that it is
+not theoretical to say that the people learn to use a new form whilst
+they are using, then discarding, the one that came before it. In Italy
+nothing of the sort happened. The international culture of its scholars
+put them in contact with all that was best or worst in the politics
+of Europe. They would have been ashamed to be behindhand in what was
+considered social progress.
+
+Then two uncommon factors came into play after 1870. To make Italy, it
+had been necessary to trample upon a good deal of historical tradition.
+Not all the local governments were as bad during the eighteenth
+century as they were said to be. Moreover, paramount had been the
+prestige of the Popes. Against all the Conservative forces the men of
+the Risorgimento had appeared as a lot of Jacobins; they had to fight
+the Church in its temporal power, and although this power was not
+essential to religion it had behind it a tradition of ten centuries.
+With the government of the Popes the whole Italian civilisation was
+closely connected; indeed, the best brains of Italy have always
+realised that, whatever the faults of the Church, Italy is first of
+all a Catholic country. Anti-clericals in their political activity,
+men like de Sanctis, would not have printed a word against the Church
+as historians. Indeed, the greatest thinkers of the time, Gioberti and
+Rosmini, tried very hard to be good Catholics and great philosophers at
+the same time.
+
+Yet since they could not doubt that Italy must have Rome for its
+capital as the seal of its political unity, the Popes had to be
+deprived of their temporal sovereignty. The feeling about Rome was one
+of historical mysticism, and seldom, if ever, have men found themselves
+thrown into an irreligious attitude by a sentiment of that kind. No
+contradiction could have been more profound, 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 past. However, there was no alternative; adopting Illuminism as
+one of the chief currents animating modern life, they had as their most
+precious support the anti-Catholic movement, to which, as a matter
+of fact, a great many of them belonged. Anti-Catholicism had a great
+weakness in that it was not a national product, but had been introduced
+into political life as a necessary stimulant to rouse the people from
+their slumbers, as will be seen later on; now that they were awake it
+divided the nation and prevented the welding of the new tradition to
+its history of twenty centuries.
+
+The statesmen of this epoch had no experience of the administration and
+government of a big State: they were not conscious of the problems of
+international relations; they knew nothing of the economic and social
+exigencies of a population exceeding thirty millions of souls.
+
+The people had no political education whatsoever. On the other hand,
+the leaders would not be retrograde and became more and more liberal,
+at a rate that did not allow the people to be prepared by experience
+for successive steps in popular government. The sequence of reforms was
+not historical, was not dialectical: it did not correspond with the
+spiritual and economic development of the people, but was introduced to
+make up for lost time and bring Italy up to the Western European level
+as fast as possible.
+
+With no tradition to make up ballast, the so-called “Right” could not
+be termed Conservative because it originated in a revolution, and
+it kept its old ideal as a target after it had been realised, and
+therefore had ceased to be a principle of action.
+
+What was to be expected under such conditions? The wonder is that the
+nation did not go to pieces, and that the work of two generations of
+constructive men was not destroyed by their incapacity to husband what
+they had created. In the face of such facts one cannot help thinking of
+Vico and his identification of divine Providence with the rationality
+of history. This people was politically at the nursery stage; it had
+no modern political science of its own, and therefore none of its
+legislative acts were based on actual and practical understanding of
+what were the national necessities. They were inspired by the example
+of foreign governments and, consequently, could not meet Italy’s
+peculiar necessities. What did for the others could not do for Italy.
+Yet it was impossible to keep back a people so well informed of modern
+progress.
+
+The Italian Liberals, it must be said for their immortal fame, had the
+clear-sightedness necessary to attain their aims, inasmuch as they
+had reduced them to a formula that could be accepted by all the other
+patriots. “Italy, one and free,” was their aim, and to this aim nobody
+could object. The flaw of such an aim is that it is too simple to
+correspond to actual reality. It sounds like an algebraical axiom, and,
+indeed, is just as abstract in its basis as any mathematical formula.
+
+For the Liberals the nation was exclusively constituted by its
+territorial expansion and by the unification of the people of the
+different states therein included. They could not change their aim,
+and when they had to administer the new realm their eagerness and
+singleness of purpose often blinded them to reality. As the unity
+they had reached was formal, if one can term it so, their legislation
+purposely ignored the differences between Sicilians and Tuscans; and
+in their haste to unify internally what was already externally one,
+they imposed what could at best be formal and artificial unity. Every
+annexation had been preceded by a local struggle, and success was not
+sufficient to cause equanimity in the triumphant party. All that had
+existed under the old régime was an object of hatred to the Liberals;
+and their ministers, even when they kept above such feelings, were
+none the less unable to discriminate between the antiquated local laws
+and those that were still useful and even good. They destroyed local
+institutions, often created to meet actual requirements, to impose, for
+instance, upon the people of Sicily Piedmontese laws, the inspiration
+of which was usually imported from France or England. They had the
+impression that it would be dangerous to the unity of the country to
+keep some of the local laws, or to make new ones to meet the particular
+needs of this or that province. In the minds of these passionate
+creators of unity, unity was a quite fragile affair, produced by
+them _ex tempore_; they did not see that it could only be the result
+of a slow elaboration, bound to go on for generations, 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 country.
+
+The same singleness of vision was to prove blinding in regard to
+several other points; 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 gentlemen, led those in power to consider the higher classes
+as exclusively constituting the nation they had brought into being. The
+rest were politically non-existent; 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
+Socialism.
+
+Finally, another cause of trouble—indeed, another consequence of the
+same lack of political tradition and education—was the impossibility
+of forming proper party organisations. Who was Left—and who was Right?
+Discrimination was impossible. Parties, like all historical organisms,
+are called into being and developed according to, and in consequence
+of, the political development of the country. In Italy they had to be
+produced, planned and organised all at once, by the mere empirical
+decisions of men, who, whatever their ability, or the loftiness of
+their ideals, could not avoid the arbitrariness and the errors to
+which the best individual men are subject, limited as their views are
+by their personal feelings or ambitions. Therefore, what happened
+was this: some followers of Mazzini who had joined the Liberals in
+the struggle for liberty, stood out as republicans; some who had
+followed Garibaldi and who had for ten years longed to take Rome from
+the Pope, became anti-clerical democrats; 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
+Freemason, whilst another might have had strong democratic tendencies
+and yet stand for tradition. The best instance of this may have been
+Crispi: he belonged to the Left, and certainly often acted and felt
+like a man of the Right.
+
+Such confusion was to reach its climax when, after 1866 and 1870, it
+was understood that the king and the government, having obtained the
+Veneto from Austria, had given up the intention of adding Trento and
+Trieste to the kingdom. Then the extreme Left joined irredentism to
+its anti-Catholic activity. They went on speaking of the ethnographic
+right that such provinces had to claim themselves as Italian, and
+they artfully bound their anti-religious campaign to a programme that
+sounded highly idealistic. No wonder that the different governments
+that succeeded each other should lose their time fighting the ghost
+of financial bankruptcy. One thing only can be brought against them,
+and it is that though all men of great culture they did not understand
+how unhistorical were their actions. They should have known that their
+conception of State and citizen, their idea of what is the function
+of the government, had been taken ready made from other countries and
+lazily accepted without any proper study of its antecedents. Some were
+Anglophile, some under their new Germanophilism hid the most perfect
+assimilation of French doctrines taken in their easiest and, therefore,
+most abstract formulas. None took liberty for what the word had meant
+of actual and positive political conquest to the average Englishman
+of the seventeenth century; they did not even take it for what it had
+meant of practical improvement to the Frenchman of the eighteenth
+century; they took it as a rhetorical figure with an abstract concept
+behind it, as soon as it ceased to mean independence from foreign rule.
+
+They termed themselves Liberals, however, and when they came to be
+ministers of a Liberal government they professed sometime a very
+curious notion of what such a government should be; Cairoli put it down
+in three words, _reprimere non prevenire_; an excellent motto perhaps,
+when the citizens are used to the exercise of their duties and rights,
+but soon proved to be dangerous in a country where traditions had been
+trampled upon during half a century. In less than a decade Italy was
+the prey of anarchy, for in 1878, the same Cairoli, had to defend the
+king’s life in Naples at the risk of his own, and in Florence and Pisa
+bombs were thrown against the crowds rejoicing over the king’s narrow
+escape. The Liberals looked at the way legislation worked in France and
+in England, but, like all followers of Illuminism, they took it for
+granted that there existed a certain kind of animal which was the same
+wherever and whenever you find Man, and they looked at the application
+of the system, not at its origin, not at its philosophical and
+political antecedents; in short, they did not see that it was brought
+about by the whole history of the countries in which it flourished, and
+they believed that it would work wherever men lived together in nations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NATIONALISM AND SOCIALISM
+
+
+Under such circumstances what was the government for the political
+classes? A coach in a land of brigands; for the most popular elements
+a coach to be attacked on the roadside; for the better elements, a
+coach they had a right to drive, whip in hand. Every man stood up
+against the government either begging or threatening; so that it is no
+wonder that the next generation of gentlemen mostly stood aside and
+shunned politics, seeing that at best the men who mixed in it were
+moved by selfish ambition, or were a vulgar crew of Arrivists and
+mischief plotters. Abstention on the one side was, however, a form
+of selfishness, as harmful to the state as Arrivism on the other.
+Provided they kept clean hands, 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 slumber. Obviously
+their withdrawal from public life had the same cause as the ambition
+and the unscrupulous opportunism of the others. After fifty years of
+heroic life and feelings, they wanted to attend to their own business
+and enjoy life privately. Public cares and struggles had been the order
+of the day for half a century, and public conscience relaxed; with
+a sudden eclipse of national consciousness, 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 world.
+
+Its foreign policy is the best index of the spiritual conditions of the
+period, and according to the historian, Michele Rosi (who is neither
+a Fascist nor a Liberal, nor a Socialist, because he is a man born to
+put together facts, historical facts, and live a passionate life among
+them instead of living it among men) 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 others. Rosi does
+not say so, but the facts he puts together do say so.
+
+Of this the best proof was the Triple Alliance. In 1873 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 court. 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 Trieste, whereas it had never been thought in the past that Rome
+or Venice might have been so abandoned. In Parliament, however, the
+Left was quite willing to lean on the shoulder of Germany, and was
+submitting even to an alliance with Austria, although some of the
+members had dark remembrances of its rule. But at the same time they
+flirted with France, who was going more and more to the Left, and whose
+anti-clericalism seemed to cheer on their own anti-Catholicism.
+
+In 1877 Francesco Crispi, the best statesman of Italy at the time,
+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 Right, made
+a diplomatic tour to the capitals of Germany, Austria, France and
+England. He had one open aim, and another one not quite so fully
+acknowledged, which was to look for support against a possible
+aggression that was feared both from Paris and Vienna. The impression
+he received was that Berlin might accept an alliance with Italy
+against France, on the understanding that Austria would be left free
+to do what she liked in the East. Thirty years before, Italy, still
+in the making and far from seeing yet her way to unity, had attacked
+single-handed the greatest empire of Europe in an offensive war; now,
+out of fear of a possible attack from France, which Bismarck himself
+declared very unlikely, she entered into an alliance from which she
+received only orders and prohibitions. When the Congress of Berlin took
+place, all that the representative of Italy could do was of so little
+avail, that the Germans declared that the French and the Italians
+had to settle the question of Tunis between themselves. This did not
+admit of any compensation to Italy for the Austrian occupation of
+Bosnia-Herzegovina and expansion in the East. The Italian policy at
+that congress betrayed a total incapacity to display the policy of a
+great State in foreign affairs. The reasons were threefold, the men in
+power had a very poor understanding of the forces and the interests of
+the country and, in consequence, could not act according to these; they
+were holding on to ideologies, that had served their time and whose
+high-sounding rhetoric could only help them to hide the vacuum of their
+minds; finally, 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 stood.
+
+Negative as it was, the attitude of the government was in harmony with
+that of Parliament. When, in January, 1879, the Senate disapproved
+of its foreign policy, the head of the government, who was Depretis,
+shifted all responsibility by saying that, as Prime Minister, he
+had in that department followed faithfully the traditions of the
+Right, although he belonged to the Left. In February of the same
+year, Mussolino strongly advised them to enter into an alliance with
+Germany; he knew, said he, that Bismarck would accept it unwillingly,
+as he believed the Italians to be unfaithful, but that he would do
+so nevertheless, needing Italy against France. Nothing could be less
+heroic, than a Senate which had good grounds to feel pride in the newly
+achieved national independence, and was yet so low spirited that it
+could accept an alliance on such grounds.
+
+The ideal of the Risorgimento had been realised, and as the new
+leaders _had no new ideals_ they had nothing further to realise; they
+were bodies without souls, with nothing that might give them a chance
+to display the gifts with which nature had so largely endowed them.
+Materialists in philosophy they strove to make the country more and
+more materialist, fighting religion under the names of clericalism and
+obscurantism.
+
+Obviously what kept the various governments of Italy from having a
+dignified foreign policy was that the country was in a state bordering
+on anarchy. One cause of this was lack of experts in all the political
+classes, devoid, as the best men were, of personal or traditional
+experience to help in the application of their imported legislation;
+but the main cause was undoubtedly the amorphous state of the working
+classes. If man is to be called a political animal, the labourers of
+Italy were not men fifty years ago. They did not care what happened
+and did not think they had anything to say in the matter: they were
+politically unconscious. Not that they were stupid: their art, their
+songs, their traditions attest the contrary.
+
+Their political unconsciousness, far from making things easier,
+rendered a good Liberal government very nearly impossible; for apathy
+and indifference in the lower class, while it may be very well under an
+absolute monarchy of the patriarchal type, under a Liberal constitution
+is apt to prove a curse. First, the lower middle class kept drawing men
+from the people, and these men, with the natural gift of adaptation the
+Italian shows to a greater degree than the slower northern races, 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 working. Among these men and among the crowds of
+half-intellectuals employed by the State in the innumerable offices
+created by the centralising administration, in the national schools, in
+the railways, post services and so on, the members of Parliament, who
+belonged to the Left, recruited their votes. 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
+emphasised. The dates are eloquent, Rome became the capital of Italy
+in 1870, in 1882 the franchise is extended, and immediately a workman,
+Maffi, and a pure Socialist, Andrea Costa, are elected.
+
+Without attempting a sketch of the development of Socialism in Italy,
+it must be said that it certainly did a great deal of good to the
+country. It aroused the working masses from their slumber and bettered
+their material conditions, which badly wanted bettering. To stir the
+people out of their amorphous state and make them conscious of their
+rights was a very wholesome operation. It would have been better to
+have made them realise at the same time that rights never go without
+duties, and that to co-operate in public life they had to undertake the
+one in order to get the other. But this, however, was more than could
+be expected from agitators, who often had, themselves, a very poor
+notion of the relation of right and duties. Their incitement to the
+people was to make material well-being, the ultimate end of all effort.
+
+Vulgar as it was, yet it was the proper aim for a materialistic age,
+and it had the advantage of being concrete, positive, and within range
+of the people’s rudimentary political understanding. Therefore it
+worked. It had the first quality that an idea must have to move people
+to action; it corresponded to the real needs of the workers.
+
+The nobler side of Socialism, that which had made it highly idealistic
+and has made its ultimate end a dreamy Messianism, did not strike root
+in Italy. It did not appeal to the people, and whenever it fascinated
+some stray poet or idealist, like Andrea Costa or Mussolini’s father,
+they failed to arouse an echo in the minds of the labourers. This
+should have been sufficient to show that it did not suit the Italian
+mentality. Mankind, the fraternity of mankind, the lost paradise
+reconquered by the mutual love of men, could not mean much to Italian
+ears. It sounded abstract, and at best did not show much chance of
+being realised by the present generation. The Socialist leaders had
+to attract followers with more concrete things, with plans that could
+be realised, and to arouse in them a passion for an actual object.
+Consequently they harped on the necessity of getting better wages for
+less work. They planned Labour organisations which gradually grew
+stronger, and they taught the workers to hate their employers.
+
+Yet this was not the worst part of the leaders’ activity; that was
+the corrupting consciousness they gave the workers of an unlimited
+political power without any corresponding duties. Out of unfairly
+treated men they made bullies, most unhappy bullies, the worst kind of
+bullies. The torture of Mussolini’s youth was this rapid decadence of
+Socialism in Italy, although it had the advantage over other parties
+of a stock of general ideas and a definite programme. It was only the
+weakness of other parties which made it look strong until the war and
+during the years that followed the peace; for as far back as 1910 the
+historic ideas it had brought to Italy had yielded their crop. Had it
+not been so, Socialism, between 1918 and 1920, would have worked out
+in open revolution. As it was, it had built up a class organisation
+that was the first regular Party in modern Italy, and this meant
+considerable experience for the whole nation; it had besides bettered
+the material conditions of life of the lower class and awakened them to
+political consciousness, which is a contribution to the development of
+the country as a modern State that cannot be overrated.
+
+Liberalism, be it of the Right or of the Left, had had an Italian
+form, which had proved its consonance with the historical position of
+the country by the efficiency with which it had realised its ideal.
+Italy, free from foreign rule and politically one under the House of
+Savoy, was doubtless the creation of Italian Liberalism. But as a
+home governing party its inefficiency was obvious; one may think that
+its failure was due to its non-national stock of ideas, 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 evolution.
+
+Socialism, on the other hand, was yeast, and as yeast it was very good
+for Italy, for the unleavened masses rose into shape and life under its
+action; thereby emerging from their amorphousness they entered into the
+political world and brought with them the force and life of numbers.
+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 needed, as their singleness of aim and the loftiness
+of their ideals had been sufficient to keep their high-minded members
+in unity. Yet it proved a curse, as its leaders were unable to realise
+that the wretched means they had to resort to, in order to arouse men
+into action, were due to the fact that the higher side of Socialism did
+not fit the mentality of the people.
+
+Another party must be now considered, and that commands a great deal of
+respect from any foreigner that may have watched with loving eyes the
+life of Italy: Nationalism. Corradini and Federzoni may be looked upon
+as its leaders, and their followers were a mere handful of men. They
+had a clear notion of what they wanted, and to a certain extent they
+may be considered as the rightful heirs of the Risorgimento. Again they
+were all gentlemen, gentlemen being taken as the English equivalent of
+_vir_, implying the sterling quality of the individual and not at all
+his social position or his æsthetic refinement, which may be merely
+the consequence of wealth. 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 men. But then the crucial
+point is that their convictions must have magnetic attraction for the
+general public. And the Nationalists had not this. Their ideas were
+too high and, at the same time, they were obsolete, besides being no
+more Italian than those of Liberalism or Socialism.
+
+The Nationalists’ idea of a nation was as materialist as their aims
+were idealist.[1] Now this would be sufficient to condemn to sterility
+the best wills in the world. To state this plainly, the easiest way is
+to take man as a simile for nation. There are two ways of looking at
+a man: he is _one out of many_, or he is _the one central reality_.
+As one out of many he knocks in every sense against the reality of
+the many, and is therefore identified by his very limitations. Such a
+conception of the man is evidently negative. He is appreciated not so
+much by what he actually does, but by what he has done, or possesses;
+not so much by what he is, but by the rank he occupies, and which may
+often be determined independently of his ACTUAL value. But as the
+one central reality a man cannot come into competition with other
+objects of appreciation; he can no longer be gauged from outside. Now,
+obviously, from the world of objective and natural reality, we are
+shifting to the subjective and spiritual world. We have in front of
+us no longer an individual belonging to the world of things—we have a
+person. Common wisdom has for centuries professed that to understand
+a person’s motives it is necessary to put oneself in that person’s
+position; and daily experience shows that we understand the people we
+love better, because we can make ourselves one with them and judge them
+from their own point of view. To appreciate a personality this method
+is indispensable; 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 him, unless he
+goes on living them and making them for ever his spiritual experience.
+He must be judged by what he is doing actually. Neither must one
+measure him by his property, but by what he is still able to produce;
+nor by the regard or contempt of the people who surround him, which is
+based on what he has done; nor on what his people were, but by what
+he actually is. 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 achievement, or his property, to that of other people.
+Past deeds should not raise him one whit in our appreciation unless he
+continues them with perfect conscience of their value, for their actual
+and his personal value depend exclusively of the conscience he has of
+such value and of his aptitude to keep it actual.
+
+Of this fact Corradini and his friends had excellent examples in Italy.
+Some of the landlords, who owned relatively small estates and quite
+insufficient capital, managed to bring their land to the highest rate
+of productiveness, so that the actual production was superior to that
+of estates of a much bigger acreage. The owners of the _latifondi_,
+on the other hand, were not all sufficiently rich to have their lands
+ploughed, and those who were did not always do so, although some Roman
+princes did cultivate thoroughly, very often as much from patriotism as
+from the wish to increase their incomes. Conspicuous among them were
+some leading Nationalists. 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 capital, 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 it. But they did not think of the nation
+as of a man whose value, practically as well as spiritually, depends
+not so much on the capacity he has for doing things, as on his being
+conscious of such capacity. Therefore, they looked at Italy measuring
+it by the poor figure it cut in foreign policy, by its colonies, by
+its financial weakness, comparing it always in their minds with other
+countries; in a word, judging it from outside as if it had belonged
+to the field of natural science instead of belonging to the world of
+history, which is after all the world of Mind.
+
+Thank God, however, “_le coeur a des raisons que la raison ne connaît
+pas_,” and some of these men, Corradini above all, were men with
+great hearts and deep souls. Out of faith and love of their country
+they realised what their conception of political reality would have
+kept them from seeing, namely that the root of all the evil was that
+the people of Italy had almost allowed the stifling of their souls.
+Religion in some provinces had been, so to speak, extirpated by the
+anti-Catholic democrats, republicans and radicals; both religion
+and patriotism had been lulled to sleep by the Socialists. The only
+political cell still living and strong was the family. The Nationalists
+were beset by another cause of sterility, the men these leaders
+recruited ... did they share their religious and truly patriotic
+motives? All did not, and that was the misery of it. Yet Corradini and
+some others were men of faith, just as much as Cavour and Mazzini had
+been; they could get men to join them in holding aloft a torch whose
+flame flickered in the cold twilight of Garibaldi’s Italy. They kept
+the sacred fire of Rome burning, and openly preached self-sacrifice,
+whilst great artists and sceptic scholars invited the youth of the
+upper class to enjoy life and shut themselves up in selfish existence.
+
+The Nationalists were men of faith, and as everything is possible to
+him that believeth, 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 one. For the Nationalists the nation was a
+transcendent reality, objectively considered as to the individual. Such
+conception is not peculiar to Italy by any means; yet it was modified
+in its Italianisation, but always in a way that made it more and more a
+policy for the gentry. A good deal of culture (I don’t mean philosophy,
+but a true sense of history and a sound judgment) was at the basis of
+it, and this did not tend to make it a popular movement. To sacrifice
+oneself to something transcendent, to an historical construction, is
+not for the mob: not even for the lower middle classes, absorbed as
+they are by the problems of daily life.
+
+There we touch what really distinguishes the Fascists from the
+Nationalists, for whom the State belongs to natural reality, is
+transcendent in its relation to the individual, and negatively
+conceived in its relation to other states, where it appears one amongst
+many. It is a great engine that needs the co-operation of all the
+citizens to make it work, but it _does_ exist independently of the
+citizens. Philosophically this conception belongs to the eighteenth
+century. For the Fascists, the State is not transcendent in its
+relation to the citizens: it is immanent; it is their own spiritual
+and economical life in its political summing up. In its relation to
+other states it is not negatively conceived as one amongst many; for
+its citizens, it is their national self, whilst the other nations
+are constitutive of their national non-self. The positiveness of the
+State for its citizens implies therefore, for them, the negativeness
+of the other states.[2] Such a conception sounds merely theoretical,
+and yet it was not born in words. Its painful birth was the outcome
+of Mussolini’s experience as a Socialist and a party leader. 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 who, in 1911, were condemning him at Forli. Besides
+this very curt answer, he never expressed it except in deeds, so that
+the form under which it is given here is contributed by the author.
+The rest of the doctrine that can be inferred from his four years’
+speeches, legislation and administration, can be traced in the whole
+of the philosophical works produced by Italian idealism; but this,
+although perfectly consonant above all with Gentile’s theories, was
+certainly one of Mussolini’s most original ideas.
+
+The task of the government is to raise the level and increase the value
+of the citizens, attending not to the organisation of every branch of
+life manifestation, but to the regulation or rather systematisation of
+such organisation in order to have always the most intimate fusion of
+state and citizens. The empirical self requires that the peasant should
+plough his field, sow the seed and reap the harvest. All this he is
+bound to do to satisfy his material needs and the work thus considered
+is certainly not ennobling, since man works as the slave of hunger.
+Fascism says to the peasant: “Thou shalt no longer plough, sow, reap
+for thyself, that is to say _exclusively for thy material self, but for
+the State, which is that same empirical self plus its transcendental
+complement_.” Hence ploughing, sowing and reaping are no longer the
+work of man, slave of his material needs, but of man transcending them,
+_without disregarding them_, however, and lifting thereby his daily
+occupation to the dignity of moral realisation of his own economic
+value.
+
+The only precedent that this application of Fascism seems to have had
+is the Christian sanctification of work, which is undoubtedly one of
+the noblest gifts bestowed by our religion upon mankind. The study of
+Fascism as a doctrine will offer many such coincidences.
+
+The State must be universally present as a moral factor in every
+branch of its citizens’ activity. It is in fact the all-pervading
+consciousness that man must have of his citizenship which expresses
+itself as the government. Obviously extension of territory should be
+immaterial if the people of a country could actually be lifted to this
+high state of political realisation.
+
+But even at the stage reached by Fascism it is easy to see how it
+affects the policy of foreign states towards Italy. 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 value, then you can very nearly cease to trouble about
+foreign policy, which must be the projection of the home policy, that
+is to be the supreme affair of a government intent on the valorisation
+of its country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE EUROPEAN WAR AND ITS EFFECTS
+
+
+In March, 1914, the cabinet of Giolitti retired owing to some
+differences with the Radicals. 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 Italy. Sonnino, leader of the Opposition
+and one of the best men that the Right could boast of, refused to form
+a new cabinet and managed to have the office entrusted to Salandra.
+The German Emperor, passing through Venice on his way to Corfou, had a
+long talk with the king and the Marquis of San Giuliano, the fact being
+considered a new proof of Italo-German friendship apparently even by
+the government, whose endeavours were all directed to secure a majority
+in both Houses and to avert the storm that was threatening at home.
+
+The railways were on the verge of a general strike, the state officials
+were demanding better wages and tried to enforce their requests by
+forming a trade union; workmen and peasants made riots in various
+provinces, especially in the Romagne and Marche, where in June the
+Red Week gave the spectacle almost of a revolution. 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
+revolution. Salandra and his ministers were so beset that they let
+foreign affairs go unheeded or at least treated them as a matter of
+minor urgency. It must have been a great shock to them to realise the
+imminence of war.
+
+When the war broke out involving all the great European Powers the
+public generally believed Italy to be bound to back the Triple
+Alliance. Immediately the Socialists and the extreme Left stirred up
+a campaign on the ground that the Italian people were pacifists and
+supporters of international Socialism. It is not easy to say whether,
+even had it been pledged to do so, the government would have been able
+to obtain the support of the nation to enter war immediately. Morally
+the people were not ready to accept a war without attack or without
+provocation from somebody.[3] 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 Switzerland, and above
+all should not be considered as definitive.
+
+The tenor of the press showed on which side an eventual intervention
+of Italy would take place. Everybody was either neutralist or
+interventionist, but nobody was in favour of an intervention on
+the side of the Triple Alliance. The most Germanophile never went
+farther than neutralism; all that they hoped and prayed for was the
+non-intervention of Italy.
+
+The argument of the neutralist papers was based on a statement of
+the economic and individual sacrifices that war would involve, and
+a plea that Italy could not yet be fit to enter such a conflict.
+Anti-idealists or sceptics (as many of the sons of the heroes of the
+Risorgimento were) they all agreed to regard life as the supreme value
+and material well-being as its natural frame. Of war they only saw the
+destructive side. They were certainly logical. A conception of life
+so thoroughly materialist could not permit of a higher view of war;
+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 changes, and the industrial and commercial
+stimulus carried in its trail. The immediate consequences are certainly
+unsettling and paralysing to business.
+
+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 opponents. France,
+Belgium and England were identified with right and civilisation,
+Germany and Austria with wrong and barbarity. Therefore Italy should
+have the honour of being among the righteous avengers of liberty and
+civilisation against their traditional foe, barbarity. This opposition
+of two abstractions to the materialism of their opponents betrayed
+the ideologic heirloom of the eighteenth century, so dear to the
+self-admiring minds of the educated mob. For there is such a thing as
+an educated mob and it is sure to be on the side that offers a high
+sounding rhetoric, a certain number of stock phrases and a fascinating
+ideology. It is so much easier to accept ready-made ideas than to work
+them out from actual reality.
+
+It was not likely, however, that such claptrap should move the people
+to war. Fortunately, there was another side to the question and that
+was the chance of getting Trento and Trieste, in whose intellectual
+life the old spirit of the Risorgimento had kept two strongholds. All
+that was Liberal and traditional in the Italy of the nineteenth century
+rose to the bait. The highest form of Italian Liberalism and its
+aftermath Nationalism, unfurled their standard with the old zest and
+their followers displayed their immortal eagerness to make this last
+addition to their forerunners’ building of Italy. Not only were they
+splendid in the propaganda days, but they were the first to enlist,
+and both young Nationalists and old Liberals made it a point that “no
+gentleman should stay at home.” Naturally the echo they aroused was
+far from being general. If all the Liberals and the Nationalists were
+gentlemen not all the so-called gentlemen belonged to these parties;
+there was as much political indifference among the higher classes as
+among the lower. 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 Nationalism.
+
+This much being said in praise of the Nationalists, 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 farther. It was indeed the last flare of their imported
+notions of political reality. For nearly five centuries intellectual
+tradition had bestowed upon Italians a mentality which is historical
+nearly beyond understanding for foreigners. It will be traced back in
+another chapter from Dante’s _De Monarchia_, but it may be here taken
+from its first practical assertion. Machiavelli, at the end of the
+fifteenth century, acting as Chancellor and Secretary of Florence, was
+honoured with the unlimited trust of the _Gonfaloniere a vita_ and in
+every respect proved himself worthy of such high consideration. He was
+exceedingly grateful to the man who entrusted him with missions, the
+official charge of which could not have been legally bestowed upon him.
+Yet, whatever his regard for the high-mindedness of his principal, from
+a close study and strict observation of political facts he came to the
+conclusion that nothing could prevent the Gonfaloniere’s policy from
+failure.
+
+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 Florence.
+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 made, for bad or good,
+by the civilisation of the time. 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 Angelico,
+and that of Signorelli who introduced realism in his own vigorous art.
+Good Dino, however, having been chosen Gonfaloniere to bring Florence
+back to its former virtuous ways, looked to the old Republican days for
+a model of government, 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 done. Machiavelli was no optimist, but whatever the weakness
+of his conception of history due to the philosophical notions of his
+time, he did not give himself up entirely to abusing the wickedness of
+the people. Sure enough, they were wicked—far more so than they had
+been before the Medicean had corrupted them—yet they were above all
+different and had, therefore, to be governed according to different
+ideas.
+
+It is no wonder, therefore, that the Florentine Secretary should have
+spent so many hours of his enforced leisure after the realisation of
+the event, the inevitability of which had so long haunted him, to warn
+his contemporaries and the posterity of the necessity of governing not
+according to a mummified ideal, but in harmony with one’s own time.
+_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 verità effettuale delle cose_, that is effective or actual
+truth in matter of politics. 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 dark.
+
+In 1915 such an excellent jurisconsult as Prof. Salandra and such a
+first-rate diplomat as Sonnino seemed to realise but little that such a
+principle existed. At best they harped on Trento and Trieste, when they
+did not display their rhetoric on the conflict between civilisation and
+barbarity. Still this territorial conquest, whatever its importance
+as a traditional ideal to realise, was presented above all as a
+rectification of the northern frontiers strictly necessary for the
+safety of the nation and ethnologically justified. 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
+entity, that which entitles a collectivity to have ethnological
+frontiers, in short a national conscience and a national will.
+
+Nobody seemed to realise it, but there was one man who did, and there
+we have the second flare of genius to be credited to Mussolini. He had
+become gradually conscious through constant contact with the working
+class, and the middle class as well, that they would never be fit for
+political life unless they acquired what they lacked through sacrifice.
+The recent Red Week had shown him that they would not fight, that they
+might set traps for other people’s lives, but they would not face
+either blows or death for anything; 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 ideas.
+
+It is, in fact, this national conscience, this spiritual and,
+therefore, unlimited gift that the war has bestowed upon Italy, and
+it is only now that Carducci, the most typically civic of all Italian
+poets, could write with perfect truth:
+
+  “Ei dipinga il trionfo dell ’Italia
+  Assorta novella tra le genti.”
+
+Nevertheless it is not Fascist Italy, it is not the real friends of
+Italy, who will ever find fault with the ideas that brought Italy to
+join the Allies and face the tragic ordeal of war. For it was the war,
+the mystery of death faced by millions of her sons, which has made
+Italy a moral value, and a first-rate historical factor in the present
+political world. The select minority that was the brain and soul of
+the Risorgimento has disappeared; national consciousness now fills
+the individual consciences of the majority, and this extension of the
+national conscience had nothing to do with the extended vote; it is a
+consequence of the war. Personality, national personality means actual
+unity of conscience and will just as much as individual personality.
+Such personality has effectively been born in Italy out of the ordeal
+that meant direct or indirect sacrifice from every man and woman, for
+nobody would doubt the reality of the object for which his sacrifice
+was made. Italy and her star were, up to 1915, a good theme for popular
+or academic literature, 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 reality. Hence the religiousness of their new
+realisation of Italy.
+
+It loomed indeed awful, like an obscure divinity, when it called men
+who did not quite know why they had to fight to the supreme sacrifice.
+One has to keep in mind how little civilisation and barbarity, pompous
+words, meant to the Italian lower class, and how little Sicilians or
+Neapolitans cared for Trento and Trieste. After Caporetto it was a
+different matter. The traditional foe was on their land, and by then
+they had realised what war meant. Therefore, one may say that their
+national soul was tempered between Caporetto and the Armistice, and
+that only then they became an ethical value, a spiritual entity or
+rather personality fit to play a part in the constructive history of
+the world. The point cannot be over-stated.
+
+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 men, ceasing thereby to be the monopoly of a small intellectual
+and aristocratic minority.
+
+The subjects of the King of Italy all became Italian citizens, and the
+people was finally one in its full independence; it was, indeed, the
+last act of the Risorgimento.
+
+Few foreigners, no foreigner so to speak, had in 1915 a fair idea of
+what was the state of mind of the Italians and still less of what
+could be their mentality. 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 give, or
+has actually given, with the consequent mutual vexations that were to
+strain the relations between the Allies and Italy.
+
+The author had already, in 1915, spent two years in Italy and studied a
+good deal; 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 experience, observation and study. 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 campaign. On the other hand,
+they overlooked the possibilities of a people who had in front of
+itself the whole of its national future, an historical mentality which
+was likely to keep it from the sterilising conception of positivism,
+abstract idealism or materialism, once it should have reached a
+clear sense of its own secular reality, a Lacedemonian frugality,
+and finally intellectual forces not inferior to those of the Kantian
+and Hegelian Germany. The Italians for their part had to overcome a
+radical scepticism. They had a very poor opinion of what military
+achievement they could get out of their lower class, their traditional
+financial deficiency made them fear economic destruction almost more
+than the life sacrifice of so many men. Munitions were a nightmare,
+renewal of their coal and wheat stocks a puzzling problem. They had to
+trust blindly to the Allies. In fact it is a wonder that they should
+have overcome the sense of despondency that might have paralysed them
+altogether.
+
+Thus it happened that the Italians did actually achieve far more than
+they expected, far surpassing their own opinion of their military
+efficiency; whilst doing far less than the Allies had expected. Hence
+no end of misunderstandings. 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 power.
+Before the war they thought too little of themselves, because, as we
+have said, they were still nationally unconscious, 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 conscious. Such misunderstanding was to breed all the
+difficulties that we knew of at the end of the war. The Italians had
+been victorious in war, they had triumphed over their enemies, and
+above all over themselves, since they had asserted their reality as an
+actual political value. But they were defeated in peace, or at least
+were on the very point of being defeated and destroyed by peace.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The several Treaties of peace, the conferences of the Allies, were
+a long sequence of disappointments to the people of Italy. 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 flourished. 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 clericals. Whether their leader,
+Don Sturzo, a man of remarkable power, realised the sacrilegiousness
+of using Catholic priests to pervert the minds of the peasants or not,
+the Popolari brought their violences to such a pitch in some provinces
+that they not only matched, they surpassed the Reds.[4] Naturally,
+these parties and the men who were not supposed to belong to them, but
+were flattering them in case of an eventual revolution, 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 difficulties. To them,
+the only consequence of the war was the destruction of what had been
+laboriously done between 1870 and 1915.
+
+It was at this juncture that some people banded together their
+aspirations, which seemed in the main to be the realisation in the
+Adriatic of all the value of what they called “their mutilated
+victory.” They had mostly been in the trenches, and they clustered
+round Gabriele d’Annunzio who led them to occupy Fiume, which was
+still under the control of the Allies. The Allies left the whole
+affair to Italy and had the Italian government, or a strong party,
+backed d’Annunzio and his friends, the course of events would have
+been different. The country wanted Fiume, certainly, but with what
+will did they want it? With a will that was national at last, because
+it was not moved exclusively by Irredentism, and did not identify
+itself with the will of the upper classes, but was a feeling with
+the whole people. They had deserved it; they were conscious of a
+right acquired through the common trial of the whole nation. It was,
+however, more a velleity than a will. The new spiritual life was
+quivering, it could express itself in a puerile gesture of the hand
+towards the object of its passion, but it could not yet express itself
+in action. Will or velleity—it was certainly the first manifestation
+of a really national life striving against the paralysing scaffolding
+of its political organisation. The professional politicians had been
+trained when politics were merely a question of technical detail, when
+to be a Deputy meant merely a job as a bargainer, 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 electors, 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 ministers.
+
+On the 28th of September, 1919, the government appointed General
+Badoglio Extraordinary Commissioner of the Venezia Guilia and accepted
+a discussion on the matter in the Chamber. Neither the men in power
+nor the opposition felt it possible to accept the suggestions of the
+Press, of various associations, and even of their friends who were
+urging the necessity of Fiume’s annexation. The Ministry gave in its
+resignation after dissolving the House and the elections returned 157
+Socialists, among whom were moderate men like Turati and Treves and
+many new men whose programmes were openly revolutionary, and over a
+hundred _Popolari_. These parties had a good deal in common. 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 action. They were not dreamers
+and even in their worst or best ideals they were for definiteness of
+means and purpose. 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 centuries.
+
+The Nationalists had been returned in very small number, but were
+mostly young, with considerable intellectual culture, fit and ready to
+assume responsibilities. They had all done active service in the war
+and were sorry to see its meagre result. They required an audacious and
+strong policy without being able, however, to see clearly how this was
+to be realised. 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
+party; they even called themselves different names and had no common
+programme.
+
+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 conscience. One must have spent those years
+in Italy, have actually lived the life of the Italians, felt all their
+actual experiences and at the same time have had a good historical and
+intellectual grounding in all that concerns the country, to understand
+fully the tragedy of it. They seemed to precipitate themselves from
+the soaring heights of national conscience to the lowest and vilest
+egotism. Material well-being was again the order of the day and not
+yours or theirs or the children’s, but _mine_. Beyond that nothing.
+Reality was again atomistic and the atoms constitutive of it were
+absolutely irrelatives. Nobody seemed to reflect; all were acting and
+behaving like children. Truly it is the subjectiveness of the period
+that must be taken as its characteristic. They seemed to move each
+in his own world. Even financially they seemed to have reached an
+unbridled licence. The constant principles that regulate economic
+relations which form the basis of society were disregarded. Objective
+reality was ignored just as it is ignored by children and to a certain
+degree by artists. 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 subjectiveness.
+
+Consider the factories. It is evidently a high rate of production
+that will ensure the interests of both labour and capital. Well, the
+workmen, or women, set themselves to get higher wages as they have
+done in most countries, but in the north and centre of Italy they
+did it with such a childish and, therefore, savage and lawless will
+that the works had to be shut in many instances and were not reopened
+until the advent of Fascism. So that it can be said that by not taking
+into consideration the actual production as a whole, and the owner’s
+interest, they reduced their legitimate desire for a better life to the
+destructive whims of children and ruined their own interest.
+
+The schools reflected the same destructive state of mind. That which
+makes the school is surely not the building; the children are not
+pupils if they do not learn, and neither is the master a teacher except
+inasmuch as he does actually teach. Discipline having slackened to such
+a degree that it bordered on anarchy the pupils had one fixed idea
+to do no work, and a great many of the teachers—not all indeed, for
+the teaching body has always counted in Italy a number of first-rate
+men—had the same purpose. Teaching and learning were reduced to a
+ghostly shadow by the reduction of schools to a subjective purpose by
+both parties. 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 them.
+
+Such a false vision of life is certainly not natural to the Italian
+people, and it had taken a great deal of trouble to introduce it in a
+country the mentality of which is above all realistic. It is natural to
+think that the Socialist and Popolari leaders were guilty of the most
+criminal falsehoods.
+
+On the 15th of June, 1920, when Giolitti was called upon to form a
+new ministry, 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 before. Yet the new government
+found that the best thing to do was to let things go on as they were,
+with the result that factories were taken possession of by workmen, and
+a strong reaction took shape under the wings of the new-born Fascism,
+which came out with the simple programme of restoring order _even
+against the state_ if it was necessary.
+
+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 Giolitti, who had truly never been a Nationalist, to compel
+d’Annunzio and his men to evacuate Fiume without any protest against
+the bombardment inflicted upon them. When, in the next spring, the
+elections took place, all the old parties were there again with
+the addition of Fascism. The men of the new party were mostly new
+to politics altogether, whilst some came from all the old parties
+(including the Socialist) and they had all of them taken an active
+part in the war. 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 Socialists, who were returned in the same
+proportion as they had been in the last House.
+
+The first characteristic of the Fascists was that they seemed to have
+the same programme as the Nationalists, whilst they were displaying the
+power of mass organisation that had been till then the privilege of
+Socialists and _Popolari_. (This characteristic holds good up to now.)
+They wanted to realise the political programme of the best men of Italy
+by lifting the working class up to it. As to their aim it was then
+exclusively the political and moral realisation of the practical and
+spiritual value they ascribed to the war victory. They had nothing like
+an abstract programme. 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 harmony, and their consequences all for the
+best; but the trouble begins as soon as their application is sought.
+
+Fascism has no ideologies but a cogent system of ideas able to give
+what ideologies will never give, promptitude and coherence of action.
+These ideas serve as a criterion of action rather than a theory. 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 reality.
+The method it enforces of looking invariably at both the terms of any
+one relation is practical, as only can be a method the axle of which
+is a highly philosophical conception. For the divorce between thought
+and action pronounced by the philosophy of the sixteenth, seventeenth,
+and eighteenth centuries might induce us to believe that speculative
+thoughts had nothing to do with everyday life, whereas the simplest
+and humblest action or relation to be productive has to be the direct
+and immediate expression of a thought, scientific or speculative. The
+peasant who lifts his axe over his head before striking it into the
+wood is not making a choreographic flourish with his tool; 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 wood. He certainly does not think of the force of gravitation, but
+he acts upon it. In the first contract, tacit though it may have been,
+the man who lacked hands to plough his fields and the men who had no
+field to plough, 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 ages. 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 parties, and the
+greater product of the harvest is the common aim. But when analytic
+methods, either empirical or rational, prevail in philosophy, practical
+life is infected with a ferocious individualism, the necessary
+consequence of which is the unjust attribution of the harvest to one of
+the two terms, to the ruin of the relation which has to be bilateral if
+it is to be at all.
+
+This concrete way of looking upon every economic and social problem
+does not indeed present itself as a miraculous way of removing the
+class struggles, which are, after all, one of the main forces at play
+in the civilising process of mankind. 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 achieved.
+
+After all that has been said it is surely unnecessary to point out the
+absurdity of considering Fascism as a reactionary tendency. It goes
+indeed steadily forward and its leader would not have the historical
+mind he has, if it meant to reject the labourers’ claim to preserve
+the recognition of their interests, which is the one noble conquest
+of socialism. The “reaction” was never against the working classes’
+rights; it was against all rights that did not spring from duties. It
+was against exclusive power—tyrannical as all exclusive powers are
+bound to be—that it reacted with the full consent of the population, as
+sick of being bossed by a mob minority as the mob had been to be bossed
+by the gentry fifty years before. Truly it would be a strange illusion
+of the upper classes if they were to believe that Fascism had come to
+restore “the good old times”; for that which it has come to restore or
+rather to establish is the really Christian equality of men. Christian
+because it intends rights to be consonant with spiritual value and
+actual recognition of duties.
+
+The revolutions of the past were always justified by the necessity of
+enforcing the claims of a single class. Fascism in its synthetic view
+of life strives to enforce the rightful claims of all classes, and
+considers them rightful as far as they present rights and duties on the
+same plane. If it looks to the past it is to understand the present,
+but its knowledge and understanding of history do not allow it to
+believe that history proceeds backwards.
+
+
+
+
+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 created. Such a method sweeps
+away a good deal of claptrap rhetoric and a great many prejudices.
+What matters is the actual working of an organisation towards its aim,
+and not at all the exclusive interest of one of the two contracting
+parties. Obviously this is the practical application of one of the most
+famous propositions of the philosophy of Mind. It is just as obvious
+that after a first period of political system exclusively for gentlemen
+and by gentlemen, and a second period of a political system exclusively
+drawn for the benefit of the lower class, it was natural that any sane
+party should have tried a synthetic policy, above all in a country
+where the mentality is essentially realist.
+
+The motto of Fascism is order and hierarchy. This is the necessary
+consequence of its taking into consideration always the aim and its
+actual realisation. 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 efficiency. Yet
+this notion of discipline is a trifle more modern than it sounds, at
+least in Italy. Nothing can better illustrate it than the example of a
+football Captain and his men. The boy who acts as Captain, let us say
+John Smith, has no authority over his fellows, except when, ceasing to
+be John Smith, he is Captain of the team, and while they are actually
+playing, practising or arranging a game. His authority is not personal,
+it is actual to the sport interests of the team, or the school they
+represent, so that it is not demeaning to any of his team to accept
+the dictates of his authority. Indeed the boys’ commonsense is strong
+enough, in England at least, to make them realise an idea which they
+would comprehend with great difficulty in its speculative form. To them
+it is obvious that their Captain’s authority is as absolute as it is
+actual and impersonal. He is Captain as long as he is an actual value,
+as long as he is a factor of efficiency to the general play of his
+side. His authority does not diminish one whit of the players’ liberty,
+because the will of every single player is that his side should win,
+and such identity is that which makes the actual reality both of the
+team as an individual, or rather as a person, in the world of sport and
+of the single players as members of that team. The Captain is entrusted
+with the co-ordination of a number of wills, and their welding into
+one in his own person, so that each boy freely wants what all want.
+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 wills.
+
+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 works, the notion of
+liberty taken as actual identification of each single will which is
+liberty with the common will which is law. Again the boys’ commonsense
+would find it as ridiculous to argue over their Captain’s orders when
+playing, as to go on considering him as their superior when the game
+is over, or when they have detected among themselves a better Captain.
+Thereby they teach the world a deep truth, that is to say that no value
+can be considered as static, and that its realisation being dynamic and
+actual it cannot be achieved once for all, but is a continuous process
+of developing one’s own efficiency.
+
+Hence the notion of discipline and liberty acted upon by boys playing
+football results in a conception of hierarchy which is also shared by
+Fascism, and is pregnant with so much social and political reformation
+that one cannot insist too much upon it. Nor can one abstract it from
+Gentile’s system, of which it is theoretically and practically the
+centre. 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 final, that is to say as perfect. To their young minds, full of
+freshness and elasticity, it would sound absurd not to be able to alter
+their arrangements and to modify their play in the best interests of
+the team. 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 diminished. But with this new view of hierarchy
+which Fascism takes as being grounded on actual value, 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 end.
+
+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
+“national” philosophies, philosophy being the historical process of
+infinite Mind; secondly, that as a consequence of the oneness of such
+a process, 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 politics. Neither is there any such
+thing as an international system, and this ought to be sufficient
+to destroy any hope of internationalisation of mankind. Every great
+nation is a contributor to the life of Mind, and may be said to
+take in international politics a part which is proportioned to its
+theoretical contribution. Each school of thought takes the problems in
+the solution of which it displays the peculiarities which distinguish
+its genius from another school, either when this has given to it all
+the development of which its own genius was capable, or when it is
+developing it on unilateral lines.
+
+In philosophy good examples of this are the obvious derivation of
+Bacon’s and Descartes’ problems from the Italian philosophers of the
+Renaissance, and the mutual influence of English empiricism and French
+rationalism; in politics the influence of England on France during
+the whole of the eighteenth century and of both countries on Italy
+during the nineteenth century. Looking at any history of philosophy or
+politics serves to illustrate the point. For one follows the living
+process through which theoretical notions are born one out of the
+other, and one realises the part played by the characteristics of each
+nation in the constructive play of historical forces. There could be
+no stronger evidence both of the intellectual interdependence of
+countries, and the absolute necessity of their political independence.
+
+The relation of theoretical and practical life ought no longer to be
+one of exclusive opposition. Pragmatism has done something towards
+the simplification of it and the oncoming idealism is achieving it
+in a way that may be said radical. In the history of the last three
+centuries, however, we see philosophy considering thought and action
+as the two terms of an irreducible dualism; yet such dualism must not
+be considered a product of the perverseness of modern thought. Ovid
+has left us a verse which settles the point even for people unfamiliar
+with pagan philosophy. It is only the deliberate application of a given
+system which may follow after its conception, 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 expression. A good illustration of the point can be
+had from Germany. Lévy Bruhl has sketched the parallel development of
+German philosophy and national consciousness in a work which is not as
+famous as it deserves. After Hegel’s death, when his system has given
+birth to its two political offsprings, the statolatry of Imperialism
+and the myth of Marx’s Communism, 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 fanaticism, which is as blinding as
+the religious fanaticism that appears in the history of all churches
+when, having exhausted the force of expansion that is dependent on the
+immediacy of their faith, they want to go on expanding artificially
+through arbitrary force.
+
+Few legacies of the first centuries of modern thought have been
+as harmful as the divorce between the two manifestations of human
+activity. It was, however, inevitable. Faith in the positive teaching
+of the Church was the first snare into which early thinkers fell; for
+it is not exact to say that they professed the existence of two truths
+merely to escape danger. They firmly believed it. Most of them were
+good Catholics, and as sure in their scientific maturity as in the days
+of their childhood that the Church was right. On the other hand they
+were sure of the result of their observations and experiments. They
+were sure in both cases, and so they simply inferred the co-existence
+of two truths. Nowadays, it sounds childish and the reciprocal
+limitation of the two truths would be obvious to any modern student,
+but in those days the problem had not received the light that it has
+received since; and they were perfectly in earnest. The philosophers
+followed suit for two obvious reasons; science was still for a very
+long time identified with philosophy, and the sixteenth century
+thinkers, when they were faced by the dilemma of being heretics or of
+discarding their passionate researches, took to considering religion as
+belonging to the practical manifestation of mind whilst scientific and
+philosophic researches were its theoretical activity. One more step and
+religion was to be identified as the enemy of science.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+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 epoch, 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
+age. Scholasticism having patronised Aristotle as “The Philosopher,”
+Plato was for the first time opposed to him, then Neo-platonism; then
+modern “national” schools of thought arose at the breaking up of
+the intellectual world. For a United Intellectual States of Europe
+existed during the Middle Ages; and the biographies of St. Anselm and
+St. Thomas tell us eloquently how, in their centuries, a man could
+pass from country to country to follow his studies with the greatest
+simplicity. At the time of St. Anselm, nationality could not be traced
+in a man’s works. By the time Roger Bacon wrote the differences had
+developed, and it is not impossible to find his character as a sturdy
+Briton standing out distinctly in his works. Such national tendencies
+expressed themselves only in matters of little moment, 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 others; it is
+none the less obvious that there were essential differences between the
+character it gradually assumed in various countries, a character and
+an attitude that may be identified as the initial stage of the various
+European mentalities.
+
+The best proof of this is to be had in the essential and irreducible
+differences manifest in the conclusions to which Italian, English and
+French philosophy came on the very same problem, which they found on
+the threshold of modern civilisation. Giordano Bruno, Francis Bacon
+and René 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 humanism. The
+problem of knowledge faced them in this dawn of modern intellectual
+life; and the same passionate reaction against Aristotelianism and
+scholasticism compelled their researches to take the same bent. Yet
+they came to widely different conclusions and the differences hold
+good even to-day as characteristic of Italian, English and French
+mentalities.
+
+Bruno, whose metaphysic is wonderfully synthetic and pregnant with a
+lyricism the echo of which runs through the work of Vico, faces the
+problem of truth, of scientific truth according to him, in order to
+find theoretical ground to reject the authority of antiquity considered
+by his forerunners as the well of all worldly wisdom. A conception
+known to that same antiquity but very uncommonly acted upon takes hold
+of his mind. Truly old age must be wiser than youth, but antiquity is,
+compared to his age, the nursery age of mankind, and a fairly good
+student of the sixteenth century knows far more than Aristotle, because
+he may know, if he chooses, all that Aristotle knew, and all that has
+come afterwards to the knowledge of men. Each generation brings its
+stone to the constructive activity of man’s experience. Hence the idea
+he expressed _veritas filia temporis_. Thus he proclaims that which
+will be the motto of every true Italian thinker; reality is essentially
+and above all, Historical Reality.
+
+In England, Bacon, starting on the same errand, through his researches,
+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 science, and that servile veneration for Aristotle is,
+above all, to be condemned as paralysing the initiative of modern
+thinkers. Learning is not to be considered as the work of antiquity,
+as a work already done; 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 syllogism. Man must
+trust to his personal experience, the immediate experience of his
+senses. Nothing could be more anti-historical in its consequences than
+this assertion, the unilateralness of which would be astonishing from
+a man who felt the whole of historical and social world as a pulsing
+reality, 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 wrote. He could not very
+well be expected to see the condition of his own experience in the
+experience of his forerunners, in the age in which self-assertion
+was the successful motto of every great man flourishing in England.
+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 days. Yet henceforth reality in the eyes of any true Briton
+was to be _Empirical Reality_.
+
+A French thinker faces the same problem. René Descartes at first sight
+is everything that Bacon is not; whilst the English philosopher is a
+mixture of recklessness and worldly wisdom, anxious to enjoy everything
+that power and wealth can beget, and drink to the dregs the cup of
+life, the French metaphysician recoils from the cares of power and
+the noisy turmoil of society. A longer consideration, specially from
+a more philosophic point of view, reveals affinities that were going
+to tell on their theories. Both lack the youthful enthusiasm common
+to German and Italian thinkers, and both give shape to their theories
+with a cautious prudence that marks them as men of the world. Their
+conclusions betray their divergencies and affinities much better than
+any analysis of their life and character could; for Descartes certitude
+is reached by way of induction when in the silence of meditation he
+comes to his famous statement _Cogito, ergo sum_. The touchstone of
+certitude is identified with the actual consciousness of man in the act
+of thinking. If I think surely I am; but of the rest, that is to say of
+the knowledge of the exterior world I have no control, and traditional
+science is communicated to me and was originally obtained through the
+senses just as my actual objective knowledge, therefore it cannot be
+accepted as certain. Aristotle and all the traditional fetishism come
+to nought. The _tabula rasa_ is implied as definitely in this as in
+Bacon’s work; in both cases man must begin his work from the foundation
+and put to the test of his own experience, empirical in one case,
+rational in the other, the legacies of his predecessors. 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 theories, will
+always be susceptible of being tempered by a direct call to experience
+and commonsense. The rationality of French philosophy does not allow
+of such adaptation. 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 principle; hence the radicalness that mars
+some of their practical application. With the exception of men greatly
+influenced by foreign philosophy, the French thinkers all took reality
+as being Rational Reality; and all their systems were bound to be
+radical in their applications.
+
+In their rationalism or empiricism, France and England threw overboard
+the past that loomed indeed rather oppressive, and in so doing they
+assert man, in his individual determination, as the ground of all
+reality. It is perfectly allowable to consider that the two schools
+were bound to stimulate and temper each other. The atom, the monad
+at the basis of their system is always man, but at the outset the
+unilateralism of Bacon’s gnoseology, a method based so to speak
+exclusively on sense knowledge, called for the mathematical and
+deductive method of Descartes in order to display all that it held
+virtually of scientific progress. On the other hand the French
+deductive method, although admitting the inference and resorting
+to it in its research of first principles, stood in sore need of a
+well-balanced recognition of the part played by sense perception in
+human knowledge. This will be specially obvious in the political
+consequences of the two theories. For both had their political system,
+in which their common character prevailed, inasmuch as the seventeenth
+century was for France and England the century of metaphysics whilst
+the eighteenth drew the conclusions of their premises, seeing to the
+application or realisation of all that was fertile as a suggestion of a
+renovating process to be undergone by society.
+
+Bruno’s historical reality was left in a corner, for it could not have
+been integrated in our system to which it was then contradictory,
+and still less in the political conditions that were to be the
+outcome of our theories, since it was consonant with them only as far
+as the individual was the basis of his reality as well as of ours.
+His individual is, however, neither rational, nor empirical; he is
+historical, and this implies that he cannot be considered bereft
+either of his roots in the past nor of his projection on the future.
+Nothing therein tends to diminish man; on the contrary everything
+adheres to him, dilating his personality right into infinity. But this
+notion of man was far too difficult to be realised even theoretically
+in the sixteenth century, 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 detected, and the historical notion of man realised in the light
+of such a conception. In Bruno it is not, however, a mere intuition
+although it is realised only as far as the conception of science and
+its historical development are concerned. The practical realisation
+of this notion implied a new conception of tradition and authority,
+which, far from being shaken to pieces, are in it invested with a new
+and nearly sacred character. Antithetic thereby to Protestantism, it
+knocked no less against the transcendent reality of God as understood
+then by decadent scholasticism and by most Catholics.
+
+
+
+
+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 elsewhere.
+That the difference consisted in the closer affinity of the scholars to
+the world they studied is obvious also. No greater proof is needed than
+the difference between the architecture of the twelfth, thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries in Western Europe and in Italy. Art, as conceived
+by modern æsthetics, is that degree of mind, the function of which is
+neither theoretical nor practical, but consists in expressing through
+intuition the whole life of the mind. We can, therefore, rightly appeal
+to art as the most faithful witness to the spirit that animates an
+epoch. Ample documents illustrating the difference between the spirit
+of Humanism in France and in Italy can be found in the works of Emile
+Mâle on the Gothic art of France, and in any illustrated book of
+Italian mediæval Art, such as the small but excellent album of Ojetti.
+
+Romanic architecture flourished in both countries between the eighth
+and twelfth centuries, and its monuments in France, such as St. Sernin
+of Toulouse, leave no doubt as to the debt of the country to its Roman
+conquerors. Even at that time, when the South of France had not yet
+altogether lost its traditions as the Roman Province, we can see new
+tendencies at work. In Italy, the contemporary buildings, pieced
+together with fragments of ancient columns, capitals, architraves,
+employed as simple building material, point to the more intimate
+co-existence in Italy of the old and new elements. It is sufficient
+to recall two churches of the ninth century in Rome, St. Maria _in
+Domnica_ and St. Prassede, both following the model of the great
+Constantinian Basilicas. While their architecture is inspired by the
+classic age of Christian art, and the materials are stolen from Pagan
+monuments, their mosaics evince a healthy realism that asserts the
+living tradition of local art, despite the obvious and predominant
+influence of the East. But this persistence of Roman influences does
+not exclude those of the North; Carolingian art greatly influenced
+Italy, especially in certain forms of decorative work. The golden
+altar of St. Ambrogio in Milan, the canopy above it, and some of the
+stuccoes at Cividale, prove the force of these influences in districts
+ethnically and historically favourable to their reception.
+
+By the eleventh century feudal society had either lost or assimilated
+the pre-Christian elements, legacy of the ancient world, which at first
+had cemented together the various racial tendencies extant in Europe
+at the close of the Roman Empire, thereby preparing the way for new
+thoughts and ways of living. The Northern world had fully realised a
+new social order, developing a new spiritual life and consequently
+a new art to express it. Although this art contains numerous and
+important classical and Eastern elements its originality is manifest.
+We are confronted with a new world with its own idealistic and
+naturalistic tendencies. The boldness of the architecture, 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 thought. Mâle
+has clearly shown how the artists have drawn upon all the theology, the
+philosophy and the literature of the age to express at the same time
+both the highest spiritual and the plainest practical life.
+
+Italian architecture of the same period, following more faithfully
+the old tradition, stands in great contrast to this originality. St.
+Ambrogio in Milan is an excellent example of this traditional growth of
+Italian art in the days that witnessed the full development of communal
+liberty. Very different from the Constantinian Basilica, even as the
+Commune was not the exact counterpart of the Roman _Municipium_, its
+heavy structure, so eloquent in its massiveness, must have appealed to
+its middle-class builders. In other Lombard churches we meet with the
+same attempt to create a new style with classical elements. In seeking
+to harmonise traditional disposition with the new needs, they tried
+to avoid the extreme novelties of the North, too alien to the Roman
+well-balanced and unlyrical mentality. The style of such buildings
+is present to every mind and reveals better than any description
+the unbroken descent from Imperial Rome. Indeed, from Lombardy to
+Sicily, from Venice to Genoa, various are the styles flourishing in
+the Peninsula; yet it is easy to detect everywhere strong traces of
+such descent. The Baptistery of Florence is a very good instance of
+this traditionalism and recalls faithfully that of the Lateran of the
+time of Constantine. In entering San Miniato in Florence, where the
+fanciful details of the decoration follow and are subordinate to the
+severely classical architecture, we almost feel on the threshold of the
+Renaissance, although still in the eleventh century. In the monuments
+of Pisa, Lucca and Pistoia we find the same classical qualities in the
+architectural scheme, united to the more poetic fancies displayed in
+the decoration. There is thus a conscious dependence on antiquity in
+the main architectural features, together with the utmost readiness
+to accept foreign accessories. St. Mark’s in Venice displays, even as
+the history of the amphibious Republic, all the sumptuousness of the
+East, but even in such an exotic scheme the architecture still relies
+on Imperial Rome, which had itself absorbed many Eastern elements.
+Torcello, Trieste, Murano, show as clearly as the Lombard communes
+the slow process of evolution that was to lead to the Renaissance.
+Byzantine elements are not as alien as Gothic to Roman tradition. The
+contemporary jurists had shown the great contribution of Byzantium to
+the development of Roman law, and Byzantine motives were assimilated
+more easily than those from the North.
+
+The Roman legions had brought the great expanses of the North into
+the orbit of history, but though they left deep and undying traces
+behind them, they were unable to destroy the virile qualities of the
+Northern races. So when Christianity brought a new intuition of life
+to the Western world it developed locally according to the tendencies
+of the various nations. 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 it, among peoples who “_a cultu
+atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt_.” Even though their
+growth was to be slower in some respects, such as the cultural, such
+peoples were bound to absorb more completely the full import of the
+new faith and thus produce a thoroughly original civilisation. It was,
+therefore, necessary in order to glorify the new religion to produce
+an art as novel as the civilisation which inspired it. In contrast to
+this affirmation of an entirely new mentality Italy was influenced by
+the Roman traditions that weighed upon her; they stimulated a premature
+efflorescence that exhausted her virility for centuries. Her people
+were not forced to elaborate afresh all the elements of life; the
+Church had preserved for them the framework of Roman life and law. Thus
+the energy expanded in France and in England in working out a radically
+new society and civilisation, 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 past.
+
+In all the struggles from the twelfth to the fifteenth century with
+the Empire and with the Church, the Italians invariably appealed to
+the traditions of Ancient Rome; and their appeal was not to a remote
+civilisation, but to a living tradition of their own, opposed to the
+feudal institutions of the barbarians. At the time of the Communes this
+attitude is particularly striking. The peasantry had taken shelter from
+feudal oppression in towns protected by the authority of a bishop,
+and there with the developments of commerce they grew in wealth and
+political power. We thus find a new social class, the burgher, that
+contributed immensely to the growing importance of the cities. These
+strong practical men were distinguished by that common sense and pride
+that to-day distinguishes the sturdy and self-assertive Fascists.
+Having established their institutions, they considered them a living
+part of their own persons, and brought into political life their sense
+of personal dignity and the energy of the mediæval Christian, ready to
+die for the ideas represented by his Corporation, even as the Fascist
+is ready to die for his symbolic Black Shirt.
+
+The Communes, in spite of their novelty, perhaps indeed in consequence
+of the novelty of their self-assertion, were responsible for one of the
+strongest historical bonds with the past. For in their opposition to
+the feudal rights acknowledged by mediæval law, they appealed to Roman
+jurisprudence in order to prove the legal grounds of their liberties.
+They instinctively conformed to the past, creating forms of government
+rich in future possibilities, and such conformity was not, according to
+Professor Reggio, a mere question of high-sounding names. The Communes
+reproduced of the actual and essential features of the City-State,
+all those that could be revived. Their classicism was by no means
+artificial, it was intimately felt as the surest means of destroying
+feudalism, at that time the most assertive form of individualism. Even
+the present Fascist appeal to Rome is far from being mere rhetoric;
+Rome is considered the one force antagonistic to that anti-historical
+mentality due to illuminism, that has given rise to abstract demagogy
+and individualism.
+
+The burghers, backed by the recently liberated peasantry, formed the
+strength of the Commune, and upheld the memories of Roman municipal
+organisation against the prevalently Germanic nobility. The Government
+of the Communes consisted of a college of Rectors with an Assembly
+of Elders, very much like the Senate of old, with various dependent
+_clientele_ that recall the _gentes_; the heads of the various Guilds
+were called Consuls and took command of their men in any emergency.
+Their defence of civic liberties was essentially the defence of freedom
+to attend to their trades and occupations. Here again they anticipated
+Mussolini. What matters to the Commonweal is not the individual but
+the interest he represents. They considered that this freedom of work
+was incompatible with the dependence of the Commune on any superior
+temporal authority. This was so deeply felt that the city was placed
+under the protection of a Patron Saint, who, according to Ercole
+Reggio, was not unlike the eponymous Hero of an ancient city.
+
+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 Romans. Studies of Roman Law were
+pursued with as much zeal and vigour as any other form of practical or
+religious life. As long as Pisa, Milan, Cremona, Pavia, 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 Law, as Professor Solmi has clearly pointed out, and in the art
+of Niccolò Pisano. Such Roman and classical qualities were to disappear
+when the towns lost their municipal autonomy, only to reappear at
+the present day in the idealism of Gentile, whose _Filosofia del
+Diritto_ is as much impressed by the seal of their realism as it
+is influenced by the thought of Hegel. They reappear in the Reform
+of the Italian Constitution, 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 now. They reappear above all
+in Mussolini, who told the author he did not wish that a theoretical
+legislation should regulate or rather paralyse the development of the
+new corporations, but that, following the example of the Romans, he
+wished the legislation to grow out of the minutes of every single case
+submitted to the Corporation Court. Before they disappeared they had
+pervaded all Italian life to such a degree that scholars could say
+_we_ in talking of the ancient Romans, and consider Latin as their own
+language. Ricordano Malespini says that Frederick II spoke “_la nostra
+lingua latina e il nostro volgare_.” They had two national languages,
+Latin and the vernacular, the latter itself a degenerate offspring of
+Latin, known as the “_romano rustico_,” to which could be traced all
+the various dialects in spite of their local corruptions. The Communes
+had also a great influence on the formation of the Italian language,
+and this influence tended to unification not to differentiation,
+as many historians have taken for granted in consequence of their
+political individualism.
+
+Francesco de Sanctis says that intellectual culture necessarily
+stimulates new ideas, far superior to the material necessities of man,
+and thereby calls into existence a more educated and refined class of
+citizens, putting it in communication with foreign intellectual life.
+The ultimate consequence is a closer connection of languages that
+develops not their local, but their common elements. 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 vernacular.
+Thus we see how the classical revival started at the very moment when
+the new Italian consciousness should have been born. This revival
+was aided by the establishment of great international centres such as
+the Court of Palermo at first, and later the cities of Tuscany and
+Lombardy. As the studies of Latin improved, the local dialects became
+purer and more refined. The weakness of the contemporary writers for
+rhetoric, for verbosity, their exaggerated love for the mere word, to
+which they attributed an almost religious value, seems very often the
+naïve pleasure of reasserting a family claim on a cherished property.
+
+Both Guelphs and Ghibellines are followers of Rome, the former, as
+we have seen, finding in Roman Law the legality of their municipal
+institutions, the latter appealing to the traditions of Imperial Rome
+to justify the sovereign rights of Cæsar. The whole public life assumes
+a religious character as in all constructive periods of history and as
+is the case in Italy to-day, where the previous lack of seriousness has
+been considered by the greatest thinkers to have been the product of
+religious scepticism. At that time the object of the common veneration,
+the one universal feeling of the most factious of peoples in the most
+factious period of its history was the cult of Rome. And as Religion
+played such an immense part in their whole life, the Italians were
+obliged to christianise Rome and associate it with Christian idealism.
+For Dante, Christ, and Rome dominate the history of a thousand years.
+He views history as a vast moral and religious evolution, as an
+indissoluble whole, each portion of which converges irresistibly to
+its pre-ordained end. The Birth of Our Lord at the moment when Cæsar
+Augustus ordained that all the world should be taxed testified to
+God’s approval of the Empire. Christ, in submitting His Godhead to
+the judgment of a Roman magistrate, gave Divine sanction to Roman
+Law. Dante does not consider the miraculous origin of the Seven-Hilled
+City as the only proof of the privileges it holds from God, nor does
+he ascribe to it the more important favour of a special historical
+process. Rome for Dante is equivalent to Catholicity, to conformity
+to the plans of the Divine Providence, and the history of Rome raises
+the Roman State almost to Divine rank. Guelphs and Ghibellines find in
+the Roman Jurists and the Roman Legions arguments in support of their
+opposite claims, and when the advent of the _Signorie_ involved them in
+a common downfall, the consciousness of an unbroken descent from Rome
+could never after be erased from Italian mentality.
+
+The influence of Rome on all the mediæval institutions of Italy is
+obvious to anyone familiar with the period. But the Italians, at
+the dawn of modern history, were led by this unbroken tradition of
+Rome into a habit of going to Roman history and law for a solution
+of contemporary problems, and this, while it secured their supremacy
+in the field of jurisprudence, kept their mentality from developing
+on original and modern lines. Even when Italy seemed almost to have
+withdrawn from all competition in theoretical research, her jurists
+and historians stood out to proclaim the immortality of the national
+genius. 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 idea, the dignity of man as a citizen. They overlooked the
+fact that such wonderful citizenship had never been bestowed on man as
+man, that the municipal liberties, the privileges of the _Collegia_,
+the rule over the barbarians, were the reward of the Romans, not the
+pre-ordained lot of Rome. Italian scholars felt with the deepest
+conviction that her genealogy alone endowed Italy with a primacy which
+they could not renounce. Even had they so wished they could not have
+been a modern nation in a modern world. The more they studied, the more
+did they convince themselves like Petrarch that they descended in an
+unbroken line from Marius and Sulla. Their historical mentality was
+already formed and they could not consider the human world otherwise
+than as a narrow collaboration of successive generations.
+
+Dante, in his preface to the _De Monarchia_, has stated his idea of
+this historical succession. “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 that, even as they themselves
+have been enriched by the labours of their ancestors, they may to
+the same degree endow their successors. Indeed, 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
+Republic, not like unto ‘a tree by the rivers of water that bringeth
+forth his fruit in his season,’ but rather unto a baneful whirlpool
+that swalloweth up all things nor ever restoreth what it hath once
+swallowed.” Here we find the empirical expression of what Giordano
+Bruno was to conceive theoretically three hundred years later, thus
+foreshadowing the Immanentist doctrine of history and society that
+Vico was to develop some hundred and fifty years later still. Vico
+had, in his turn, to wait until the second half of the nineteenth
+century in order to be properly understood. His ideas in 1916 formed
+the basis of Giovanni Gentile’s Philosophy of Law, and at the present
+day are realised in the Italian Constitution as elaborated by the
+Government of Mussolini. But Dante’s scholastic training could not
+allow him to have the least inkling of the doctrine of Immanentism;
+his ideal Monarch is merely a magistrate appointed and endowed by God.
+For Dante all political power could only be lawfully derived from
+the Divine law. Scholastic philosophy could not conceive a law that
+should not be dependent upon a superior will or a pre-existing law.
+None the less, this empirical statement, such as it is, 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 society.
+
+The removal of the Papal court to Avignon gave Italy a rude shock in
+affecting the good fame of the whole country. The humiliation of the
+Papacy is resented all over the Peninsula, and the eclipse of the
+Papal dignity diminishes the prestige not only of Rome but of Italy.
+A new religion, the cult of Rome, spreads in all Italian hearts, and
+its ruined monuments are scarcely less venerated than the relics of
+the Apostles. The glorious memories of the Roman Republic, the pride
+of the Roman name, give rise both to the unfortunate statesmanship
+of Arnold of Brescia and, a hundred and fifty years later, to the
+rash adventure of Cola di Rienzo. All those who cannot boast such
+an illustrious descent are contemptuously designated as barbarians,
+and this distinction gives rise to the feeling of the unity of the
+Italian races. The mystical and religious fervour with which the men
+of the Risorgimento felt for Rome, so strong that it led them to
+trample on their religion, was not stronger than that of the first
+humanists. Petrarch and Boccaccio were already preparing the way for
+the Renaissance, of which they are rightly considered as the first
+pioneers. These enthusiasts, who brought such inestimable benefits to
+the intellectual life of the whole world, nevertheless introduced into
+their own country the germ of many ills.
+
+The men of France and England could never feel at home in the ample
+folds of Cicero’s toga as the Italians did. It was for them, indeed, a
+useful garment worn with perfect ease of manners as a ceremonial robe
+donned on state occasions, or a protective covering unfurled in their
+intellectual battles. Despite its assimilation and survival as late as
+the eighteenth century in the ample periods of Dr. Johnson or in the
+well-balanced sentences of Bossuet, it did not modify to any degree the
+mentality of countries with which it did not have a close affinity,
+although it left in the minds a certain number of ideas distinctly
+pagan, such as that of birthright. French and English scholars looked
+upon Rome as something definitely outside their own world, like the
+moon or the sun, and just as illuminating to them as the former is
+to the night wanderer and the latter to all the labours of mankind.
+This transcendental quality rendered Rome indeed semi-divine in
+their eyes, but fortunately kept them from considering themselves
+the lineal progeny of Marius or Cæsar. Their cult of antiquity was
+just as profoundly religious as that of the Italian scholars with
+whom they were often in the closest relations, only their attitude
+was more detached. 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 gifts. An abyss stood between them
+and antiquity; they were unable to appreciate their real connection
+with antiquity. Their historical information as to the intervening
+centuries could only be drawn from mediæval chronicles which, full of
+detail though they were, did not offer any comprehensive view even
+of a reign and much less of a century. They failed to understand the
+essential continuity of the history of all countries, and, while not
+making the mistake of considering the Romans as their ancestors, they
+could not conceive history and society as immanent in man.
+
+Petrarch, on the contrary, considers himself perfectly Roman, although
+his lyrics are almost the first assertion of modern individualism.
+His familiarity with Livy, Cicero, Virgil, gave him an appreciation
+of classical Latin that led him to consider that of Dante barbarous.
+What matters to him is the form in which thoughts are expressed, not
+the thoughts themselves; he wanted art for art’s sake. Fortunately,
+his genius and the fervour of his cult for Rome sometimes animates his
+consciousness of the continuity of the past with the present. 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 personality.
+Guelphs and Ghibellines, Romans and Florentines have disappeared,
+and Italy speaks the proud language of the Queen of Civilisation. As
+Francesco De Sanctis puts it, the poet is an Italian, conscious of the
+superiority of his race. Marius is mentioned as if he were an almost
+contemporary person. So deeply does the young poet feel the classical
+world that henceforth he considers the heroes of Greece and Rome as
+his ancestors. With personal pride he assumes the military glories of
+Marius and Cæsar no less than the ample rhetoric of Cicero. And in this
+assumption of a ready-made glory as Italy’s inherent right, cause of
+much subsequent political and moral weakness, we may find the first
+signs of the contribution that modern Italy is perhaps now on the verge
+of bringing to civilisation. It is therefore natural that Fascism
+should attack with energy the negative side of the legacy of Humanism,
+the Italian fondness for rhetoric, union of lofty words and mean deeds,
+while accepting and proclaiming the historical conception that links
+man to the generations past and future.
+
+The Italians of the fifteenth century continued to revel in the glory
+of Rome and gradually forgot that there was an actual and living
+reality, hardly consistent with their superior attitude as the sons
+of Cæsar and Augustus. Prose and verse improved so long as the cult
+of antiquity retained its initial mystic fervour, that provided the
+religious element indispensable to all creative art. But when devotion
+to classical studies became a question of interest or vanity, it was
+only from the very greatest artists, from men whose real religion was
+the worship of art, that one could expect sincerity. All the others
+were only extraordinarily adept at the clever wording of other people’s
+ideas. They could never fail to deck any subject, no matter how mean,
+no matter how repulsive, in the full pomp of a Ciceronian oration, rich
+in beautiful sentences and displaying the careful study of all the
+figures of speech to be found in the classics. Fraccastorius describes
+a loathsome disease in the finest of post-classical hexameters.
+Politicians could act as meanly as they pleased, sure that the glory
+of Rome would raise them above the rest of mankind. Even their real
+superiority in historical feeling and in the interpretation of
+antiquity was a source of weakness. For when beaten in war they could
+always express contempt for the victors and call them barbarians,
+consoling themselves with their real intellectual and artistic
+superiority for their political humiliation.
+
+In 1494 Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, meeting with no
+resistance worth mentioning. It is not surprising, since the despairing
+cry of Boiardo
+
+  _“Mentre che io canto, O Dio Redentore.
+  Vedo l’Italia tutta a fiamma e a foco”_
+
+is almost the swan-song of mediæval Italy. At the same time a
+twenty-year-old youth, destined to become the greatest poet of the age,
+Lodovico Ariosto, could sing with perfect Horatian art and with an
+equally perfect indifference for his country
+
+                    _“asperi
+  furore militis tremendo
+  Turribus ausoniis ruinam”_
+
+and with all the selfishness of unconscious indifference
+
+  _“Rursus quid hostis prospiciat sibi
+  Me nulla tangat cura, sub arbuto
+  Iacentem aquae ad murmur cadentis.”_
+
+He has adopted the measures and harmonies of Horace and Virgil and,
+wrapped up in his pride in the glory of Rome, goes on singing his
+classical bucolic loves in complete indifference to the fate of his
+country:
+
+  _“Est mea nunc Glycerae, mea nunc est cura Lycoris,
+  Lyda modo meus est, est modo Phyllis amor.”_
+
+Reality is a horrible dream, “_improba seclis conditio!_” he is shocked
+that
+
+  _“nuper ab occiduis illatum gentibus, olim
+  pressa quibus nostro colla fuere iugo.”_
+
+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 chivalry.[5]
+
+The sixteenth century witnesses the final divorce of Italian culture
+from real life, so that for two subsequent centuries, instead of
+developing the moral and social qualities of the individual citizen, as
+in England, in France and in the Netherlands, it tended rather to the
+atrophy of all real patriotism. But at this very moment, in opposition
+to this dissolving and negative influence of Italian Humanism, one of
+the greatest men produced by a land ever “_magna parens virum_” stands
+forth to proclaim that man alone is the creator of the historical world
+and arbiter of his own destiny. The public life and the posthumous fame
+of the Florentine Secretary are equally unfortunate, but the present
+age is better prepared to appreciate the truths contained in the works
+of Niccolò Machiavelli.
+
+He, like all the intellectuals of the period, would have said “_we_” in
+speaking of the Romans, and he might have used the phrase of Leonardo
+Aretino, “_Graecos ΠΟΛΙΣ, NOSTROS CIVITAS appellavisse_,” had he
+desired to trace the etymology of that political reality so dear to
+his heart. But this identification was not sentimental; he analyses
+closely the differences between past glory and present shame. Strictly
+speaking, he is not a Humanist at all; like Galileo, he repudiates
+Neoplatonism and follows, rather, the experimental method. He carefully
+dissects the past for the benefit of the present, and deftly probes the
+wounds of the body politic. This empirical standpoint indeed would be
+a grave defect, did not his genius and sense of history as a living
+reality often lead him to intuitions that transcend both his method and
+outlook. The intuitions, the proof of the truth of which was to be one
+of the chief conquests of modern thought, are clouded by his prejudices
+or obscured by the inevitable limitations of his knowledge of facts.
+His conception of “virtue” is perhaps the most characteristic of those
+intuitions that allowed him to foresee ideas only to be understood
+by the end of the nineteenth century, and only to be acted on by the
+present day.
+
+Of course, the idea in itself was not entirely new. One of the ablest
+historians of the fifteenth century, Philippe Monnier, 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 man. 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 world. After two centuries of Humanism, noble birth
+is an absurdity. For Piccolomini, Ficino, Landino, man cannot be born
+noble, he can only become noble through his own exertions. The Stoic
+precept of the absolute autonomy of the human will is frequently
+alluded to in discussion on the power of Fortune, against which Leone
+Battista Alberti strenuously asserts the power of man to forge his own
+destiny. Alberti, typical representative of the Renaissance, in all his
+moral works, emphasises the freedom of man from all external influences
+and above all from the dominion of Chance, and for him man’s life is a
+consequence of man’s actions. Neither Fate nor Chance are a cause of
+the varying circumstances of individuals.
+
+Having these doctrines before him, Machiavelli was able to apply to the
+life of nations the ideas that governed the life of the individual.
+Rome had been powerful and glorious; Italy is weak and contemptible:
+the cause is the moral corruption of the Italians. Machiavelli does not
+always consider Italy’s invaders as barbarians; he is always ready to
+study their institutions and ways of living in order to discover the
+reasons for their military superiority. He firmly believes that Fortune
+can only display her power where no “virtue” has prepared a resistance.
+Italy, “_vituperio del mondo_,” will certainly return to her former
+strength could the Italians be aroused from their torpor. His attitude
+is identical with that of Mussolini’s government: Italy is slighted
+by the Allies, she is financially weak, the cause is the scepticism
+and self-indulgence of the people, the remedy a stricter conception of
+life for adults and a more religious education for children. Fortune,
+however, is not quite identified with Fate, and, while the latter is
+unhesitatingly rejected, the former is retained as a kind of background
+against which man can display more efficiently his will and “virtue.”
+This background, which he calls Fortune or Opportunity, is no less a
+conception than Croce’s “situation of facts.” His “verità effettuale
+delle cose” is the objective knowledge of the Crocian “situazione
+de fatto” and must be ascertained anew before embarking on any new
+action, for, according to the shrewd Florentine, “sono le cose umane
+sempre in moto.” It is, therefore, necessary to take one’s bearings
+before embarking on any course to realise one’s will. The best type of
+will is that which draws its strength from an intimate knowledge of
+actual circumstances and is consequently steady and resolute. Hence
+the profound morality of such will-power, pursuing its end without
+hesitation or incertitude, disdainful of half measures, its moral value
+immanent in the very act of volition.
+
+It is no longer possible to continue to identify Machiavelli with
+immorality or amorality, now that his doctrines have been profoundly
+analysed by philosophers, jurists, and critics of the value of Ercole,
+Croce or Gentile. We only find in his works a transposition of the
+fundamental principles of ethics. What he calls “virtue” is not to be
+understood in its Christian sense. It is closely allied to efficiency
+but is an efficiency displayed in the accomplishment of the common
+good, in the realisation of a strong State. Hunger and necessity can
+render men industrious but only wise laws can make them good. Indeed
+the laws bring people to realise the necessity of justice; social
+intercourse gives rise to all the various conditions of life, including
+education, religion, habit, law, and ultimately to the standard of
+goodness. As Gentile points out, for Machiavelli as for Spinoza the
+common good is a product of society; the distinction between good and
+evil presupposes society, that is to say a system of laws. Hence the
+saying put into the mouth of Rinaldo degli Albizzi: “No good man will
+ever find fault with anyone trying to defend his country, whatever the
+means he may employ.” 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
+writer. Machiavelli by “Patria” understands the entirety of social and
+civilised life, that is to say that the State is the only historical
+and concrete form of mankind. He is fundamentally opposed to any
+indefinite, unsubstantial idea of man that would strip him of all the
+historical influences that determine his social and political life, and
+that would make of mankind a shadowy abstraction. Such ideologies could
+mean nothing to the sixteenth century Florentine, but they do not mean
+much more to the modern Italian, and this is the reason why Socialism
+in Italy never developed its nobler side. Men who, like Andrea Costa,
+were real idealists of the Marxian school were devoid of any influence,
+despite the respect due to their high standard of personal life. If the
+whole of mankind is to be the object of the duties of every individual,
+one might as well abolish those duties; what is the business of
+everybody is the business of nobody. Therefore, Italian Socialism was
+obliged to adopt not the high, if impractical, ideals of Northern
+Socialism, but an entirely materialistic form of propaganda, harping
+constantly on higher wages and shorter hours, in order to arouse the
+interest and secure the support of the masses.
+
+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 possible.
+He could not conceive the objectivity and consequent importance of the
+State as moral reality, and still less the intimate subjectivity of the
+objective world in which man realises his will. The very word “Fortune”
+kept to indicate actuality was misleading, and veiled his real notion
+of freedom; 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 doctrines.
+
+Time and the works of Bruno and Campanella, stripped of their heretical
+outlook, 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 “virtue” and political morality. Thus, while the other
+modern nations were necessarily getting more deeply embogged in their
+anti-historical attitude towards life, Italy, in the political idleness
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was slowly elaborating
+those doctrines that may yet prove to be the ballast needed by all
+countries to weather the present political and social storms.
+
+
+
+
+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 impertinence. It cannot be reduced into schematic
+lines, for there never was a richer synthesis of life. Never have
+religion, art, 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 century. 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 trivial. Strong minds, deep
+religious feelings, the virile consciousness of personal efficiency,
+do not make for tolerance and refinement in practical life; but they
+yield a philosophical, an artistic, a political harvest on which their
+progeny continue to live for centuries, elaborating and refining
+until tolerance is the order of the day in philosophical, religious
+and political matters, whilst dilettantism and criticism flourish,
+preparing the way for new generations of creative men.
+
+The philosophy of Bacon was essentially oriented towards the world
+exterior to man, but it had already taken to consider moral and
+especially political life in the light of natural causes. The
+divine origin of the king’s majesty was in due time to be denied in
+consequence of such a view, although Bacon little suspected the fact
+and was ready to uphold such divine origin with all the force of his
+genius. Another consequence was to be the consideration of human
+society ruled by the same laws that rule the mechanism of nature, and
+this was certainly pregnant with political revolutions. The systematic
+empiricism so characteristic of English politics need not be traced
+farther back. Yet before coming to the political conception of Hobbes,
+who was the first great follower of Bacon and one of the first great
+political thinkers of England, the contribution of Grotius must be
+considered as Hobbes has a good deal in common with him.
+
+Hugo Grotius was born 1583, twenty-two years after Bacon and five
+years before Hobbes. Like Bacon this Dutchman was a statesman and an
+ambassador. The practice of business had therefore a great influence
+on his ideas and was apt to temper the excess of doctrine of the man.
+His idea of natural law is a heritage both of Pagan times and of
+Scholasticism, and based both on the distinction established by the
+Roman jurists, between the _jus civile_ and _jus naturale_, and on the
+mediæval notion of _sociability_, a special sense of which he supposes
+man to be endowed by Nature. The way such a notion is applied is, on
+the contrary, due to the more modern theory of Nature; and there we
+meet with an assertion that would have roused Machiavelli from his
+grave if he had heard it, and that undoubtedly has given origin to the
+negative understanding of history against which Idealism and Fascism
+are reacting with all their forces.
+
+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 men. But such nature is the same all over the world
+just as Nature is. It will be the same for ever in spite of historical
+oscillations just as Nature will. The presupposition of this nature
+of man, postulated out of and against every experience, is a negation
+of history as the process of the gradual development of mankind. Yet
+unquestionably its introduction in modern politics was the cause of a
+great progress towards justice, and in Grotius himself it is balanced
+by his insistence on not taking positive law out of history. 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 history. To be fair, this
+instinct of society deeply inset in the nature of man was not of his
+own invention. It is to be found in Aristotle. It is to be found in
+St. Thomas. But then the instinct compelling man to live in community
+is understood in a very different way by the Greek philosopher, by
+the great Scholastic doctor and by the Dutch statesman. For if it is
+true that historical facts which are political, artistic, military,
+receive their definite character from the ideas of the generation
+that achieved them, 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 generation. So that Aristotle understands by Nature
+the transcendental power which planned the life of man as a part of its
+universal scheme; Thomas Aquinas sees in the nature of man that which
+was determined as characteristic of mankind by the Divine will; whilst
+Grotius sees in this sense of society something very much like the law
+of gravitation—not quite, however, since in him we see looming out
+already the ghost of man anterior to society, of whom nobody ever heard
+anything and which is, therefore, a pure conjecture. Considering this
+nature of mankind as his basis, 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 nature. Once the
+filiation of law as the product of this nature of man was established,
+private and public law obviously derived from the _jus naturale_, and
+the state must originate from an agreement of its components.
+
+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 century, and worked out his scheme
+with far more cogency than the men who came after him. As it is, the
+rationality immanent to human society is too difficult for him and his
+time, and unable to realise the moral will of the collectivity he is
+thrown back with Machiavelli on a very empirical notion of liberty.
+The subjectivism of Grotius is the subjectivism of the philosophy of
+his time alternatively empirical and rational, so that the contract by
+which men give themselves a form of government is irrevocable: they
+are free to assume it, not to reject it. Obviously the souvenir of the
+Reformation with its political struggles must have been quite fresh in
+the mind of his contemporaries and influenced him, as the Revolution
+of England was to influence Hobbes; otherwise it would be difficult to
+understand how men could be considered as free to choose a constitution
+and not to discard it. The contradiction was too patent not to be
+noticed, 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 problem. It was the nature of man that led
+mankind to form communities, 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 men, the government itself was
+conceived of as mechanical as Nature, and its laws as irrevocable as
+natural law. The contradiction inherent in the twofold notion of man’s
+nature, held by men like Grotius, led them to deny the liberty of man
+which was the ground of their theory.
+
+Hobbes has a metaphysic so clear, so well determined, that his
+political conception is bound to have that cogency which belongs
+exclusively to the works of men whose philosophical grounds are
+theoretically first rate. That Cromwell should have offered him a high
+office in his government is not surprising. Obviously the mind and
+character of Hobbes are for prompt decisions and coherency of action.
+Yet his political theories are not fit for actual application. It is
+not impossible that his ideas should have influenced the political
+men of his days; but his _Leviathan_ is the conception of a man to
+whom philosophy was _doctrina corporum_. Bodies can be natural or
+artificial, and the state is the most important of all the artificial
+bodies, man being both a natural body, the most perfect natural body,
+and an element of the state, the most perfect of all artificial bodies.
+Psychology is bound to occupy the foreground in his anthropology,
+and no philosopher ever laid a greater emphasis on the distinction
+between theory and practice. Thought is considered after the Cartesian
+doctrine as relatively free, and will as dependent upon thought; the
+superiority of the former is acknowledged indeed by all the thinkers of
+the time and of the following century. In psychology the consequence
+of this distinction is a conception of the volitive activity that
+foreshadows the more modern theories of determinism, against which
+all idealisms have fought their most strenuous battles and Fascism is
+actually leading a political crusade. For Hobbes asserts the necessity
+of surpassing the state of Nature, in which all men are free, by the
+sacrifice of some liberties and by the sacred preservation of the
+engagements of the contract. But on what ground can he require such
+sacrifice and faithfulness, except that of self-preservation? Thus
+selfishness is at the basis of the edifice and there looms already the
+capital sin of the more modern conception of Liberalism. The state is
+conceived as the algebraical sum of the citizens, the selfishness of
+whose life is guaranteed by the legislature.
+
+But Hobbes was English and, despite the influence of French
+Rationalism, 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
+system. Such an artificial agglomeration of political atoms, understood
+as it was to be the most realistic and naturalistic view of political
+life, could not have stood the test of application; and Hobbes is
+carried away by his own notion of the contract into a theoretical view
+of it which is distinctly superior in moral truth, and much nearer to
+historical truth. When men come to an agreement for the defence of the
+peaceful life of each of them the state comes into being; but it is not
+a temporary, mechanical agglomeration—it is unity wanted by men. In his
+natural state man enjoys some kind of security based on the _concordia
+multorum_, but this concord is not sufficient to ensure peace, it is
+merely enough for animals. To ensure human peace something more than
+common consent is needed.
+
+Union, the union of citizens becomes something superior to the sum of
+their particular selfishnesses. 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 reached, he none the
+less joins hands with all political idealism. 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 act; 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 state. Hobbes had had enough political experience to
+realise intuitively that which his natural mechanism did not allow him
+to conceive on theoretical grounds.
+
+Such a happy intuition does not, however, take him any farther.
+His state has nothing of a moral reality, and the union of the
+citizens which it implies falls back on the ground of the law of
+self-preservation. 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 contract; and his natural man another abstraction not
+to be met with anywhere. The identification of man and state only
+happens in history and there it was to remain, unlooked for in England
+until Hume, whilst in Italy Vico was to herald the reality of society
+and history as the creation of man between 1720 and 1730. Thus, like
+Grotius, Hobbes ended by denying the freedom of will that the very
+possibility of the contract had implied. His ideal state, his empirical
+state, his natural state, are so conceived that they continually oppose
+each other or are identified one with the other in his theory.
+
+The state is therein as mysterious as Nature, and its laws are no
+less imperious than the laws of Nature, calling as they do merely for
+passive obedience, and at least in Hobbes’ theory the state is no less
+eternal than Nature, for after the contract the less the citizens have
+to say in the matter the better. Yet Hobbes was an Englishman and the
+fact was to tell; even in this most abstract theory he cannot lose
+sight of the realm of experience. And if the ruler was a bad one? 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
+work. If the ruler proved an inefficient or bad one the citizens could
+discard him.
+
+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 tyranny. 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 God. But the more absolute is this authority the better; and
+his indifference as to the choice of the state-religion did not make
+for tolerance. Not to think of Cromwell when one studies Hobbes is
+impossible; for the philosopher in front of Nature, his almighty though
+mechanical Nature, is just a fanatic observer as intolerant as Cromwell
+and as energetic in the systematic application of his philosophical
+faith. Only men of faith can alter the historical world, for religion
+remains one of the greatest factors in men’s life, although it does
+not always appear under the cloak of a definite church. In such cases,
+however, 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 flourish. Cromwell was intolerant, was a
+fanatic, but no more and even perhaps less essentially so than Hobbes,
+and both are a perfect embodiment of the genius of England during the
+first half of the seventeenth century. Never has the life of a country
+expressed itself more fittingly in its theoretical and practical term.
+Hobbes like a bee had gathered after Bacon the best of Italy, and the
+echo of Campanella is to be detected in the most characteristic part
+of his theory of knowledge; he had, besides, imported the result of
+the most recent scientific works of the French and Dutch thinkers.
+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 world.
+
+The two fanatics, one in the immediateness of his faith in the
+righteousness of God, the other in the elaboration of his faith in
+Nature, had done a great deal in the way of shaping the character
+of modern England, and the theory of one and the revelation of the
+other held in germ much that meant progress for the whole of mankind.
+But both by their superlative intolerance and despotism called for
+the reaction that was to oppose most formally man to the state. For
+Hobbes at least the fact was inevitable, his _Leviathan_ engulfs all
+rights and interests; at the same time in his theory of knowledge
+he picks up the trend of Campanella and sets the basis for a nearly
+Protagorean subjectivism. How far the theory of the _Leviathan_ was
+from Italian mentality cannot be judged from contemporary opinion.
+The Italians, or at least the greatest number of Italy’s scholars,
+were giving themselves up to academical or to immoral pastimes. The
+Cinquecento had been personified by Ariosto, Machiavelli, Aretino, the
+three expressions of the Italian society during the sixteenth century.
+The characteristics of the times had been an artistic fancy, full of
+serenity, aware of its being a mere play of imagination and making fun
+of itself; an adult thought that swept away the illusions of fancy
+and feeling, to make its own way towards the shrine of science, at
+the very core of what is the world of Man and Nature; then a moral
+licentiousness, remorseless because unconscious, therefore shameless
+and cynical. Ariosto’s fancy is displayed to such an extent that it
+mostly aroused mere irony from his contemporaries. Machiavelli brings
+realism and logic to their ultimate consequence, arousing thereby
+a sense of repulsion in men far more wicked than he was. Aretino’s
+cynicism reaches such a monstrous pitch that the most dissolute men
+turn away sickly from his books.
+
+That was the era in which the great nations of Europe were taking
+their definitive personal physiognomy. (England, as has been said,
+had already the features that were going to be the family likeness
+to be reproduced all over the Anglo-Saxon world by her sons.) As De
+Sanctis points out, the European races were building up the “Patria”
+so fondly dreamed by Machiavelli for his own people, a “Patria” which
+was to be a political unity, fortified and cemented by religious,
+moral, and cultural elements. At this same time Italy not only failed
+to build up a “Patria,” but was losing her independence, her liberty,
+and her beloved and treasured pre-eminence in the historical world.
+Not that such a catastrophe was realised except by the keen mind of
+Machiavelli. It was unconscious, it was bound to be unconscious, since
+it happened just because national consciousness had vanished. How
+could it have assumed national shape? The name of Italy was to become
+a geographical expression, for its inhabitants were not citizens,
+they were mere inhabitants, subjects by natural determination of this
+or that petty Prince. 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 person, through
+the manifestation of a personal will in foreign politics, which are
+the country’s assertion as a personal conscience. Thus a people is
+acknowledged as a nation by the rest of the world the moment when,
+through an action, the final scope of which is purely national, it
+asserts itself as a living organism able to manifest a will and act
+upon it. What Machiavelli had termed the _corruttela_ of Italy was the
+absence of national and religious consciousness, and he had pointed a
+way out of it.
+
+He was too much of a positive mind not to realise that the difference
+between past and modern times was due to a spiritual difference.
+Not knowing what to attack in the mentality of his countrymen, both
+clever and learned beyond words, 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 life, and now were quite a practical
+affair modified continually by the chance of other countries waging
+war in Italy. His great blunder, 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
+progress. Machiavelli pronounced human things to be always in movement,
+but in spite of this intuition he could not detect the processional
+character of such movement. As it was, it was sufficient to induce
+him to reject the notion of the natural state of Man as a constant so
+dear to Grotius. Yet it could not help him to realise that his own
+times, with all their wickedness, might be thought superior to Roman
+times; and Guicciardini, a friend of his, felt himself much wiser than
+Machiavelli because he had no illusion on the possibility of making
+a nation out of his countrymen. It was absurd to him, to be always
+calling on the Romans for example, it was just like wanting a donkey
+to gallop horsewise! But whatever the wisdom of Guicciardini, who
+made his God of his own private peace and well-being, a God no less
+exacting than the State of Machiavelli, and considered the world as
+his world, thereby enforcing to irrelativism the subjective atomism
+that was disintegrating Italy, Machiavelli was a wonder child of genius
+whilst his wise friend was merely a clever gentleman making egotism the
+special study of his life.
+
+Mussolini’s view on the civic regeneration of the Italian politically
+amorphous classes is very much like Machiavelli’s. Political
+indifference is also to him a result of the lack of religiousness in
+the spirit animating Italians in their public life. But four hundred
+years have passed and he could not if he wished turn to the state
+religion of Pagan Rome. If the basis of social life has to be religion,
+the positive religion has to be the one historically belonging to the
+people.
+
+In spite of the Machiavellian conception of history, the sixteenth
+century was to see the introduction of the experimental method, as
+practised in natural science, in the treatment of history at the hands
+of no less a man than Guicciardini. His _Storia d’Italia_ is in twenty
+books and covers the period between 1494 and 1534, thus beginning
+with the invasion of Charles VIII of France and ending with the fall
+of Florence. Francesco de Sanctis, with the heart of a man of the
+Risorgimento, commenting upon this work, so remarkable from many points
+of view, says that the historical period of which it treats could
+rightly have been called “The Tragedy of Italy,” but that the historian
+has not the slightest notion either of the unity or of the import of
+this tragic drama. One could object to the great critic that to realise
+such oneness of drama was impossible to Guicciardini, as the tragedy
+had its root in the historian’s unconsciousness of this oneness or
+rather of the possibility of this oneness, since such oneness did not
+exist in Italy when Guicciardini wrote, except perhaps in the heart of
+his friend Machiavelli. People of other countries provided them with
+the political events and the philosophical theories that kept their
+brains going.
+
+The works of Grotius were taken and easily studied in the land of
+jurisprudence, for the studies that went on flourishing were law
+and history. But the purpose was a sterile erudition, at least at
+the moment, for apathy had reached such a superlative degree that
+the martyrdom of men like Bruno and Socino passed unheeded—worse
+than unheeded, not understood—so that it is absurd to hear modern
+Free-thinkers reproach the Church with the death of Bruno, who was far
+from questioning the right of the Church to burn him. The Church in its
+practical policy, like all the institutions in Italy, was lacking in
+ideas and in life. The centre of civilisation had moved northward, and
+south of the Alps people were getting more and more away from it, more
+and more effeminate. In a land where indifference was the shroud of a
+martyr, 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 authority. The seventeenth century, inaugurated
+in Italy by the burning of Bruno, had in literature little to boast
+of besides the _Jerusalemme liberata_ of Tasso, for it began with the
+_Arcadia_ of Sannazaro and ended with the _Arcadia_ of Guarini. On
+the other hand Campanella, the most eminent philosopher, was not the
+only one. 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 world.
+
+Perhaps nothing is more expressive of the life of the mind than
+this temporary intellectual dearth and sterility of a race whose
+faculties were, even then, far above the average. Reduced to political
+non-existence and therefore to speculative unproductiveness, the whole
+country seemed to have gone to pieces just on purpose to let the new
+nations shake off the yoke of history, of a history too heavy with
+its pagan heritance to allow full play to the new forces of modern,
+that is to say Christian, civilisation. For modern thought and modern
+politics seemed to reject authority and history, in order to have the
+possibility of displaying what they held virtually in their mediæval
+and Christian youth. They rid themselves of the past just as the
+Church had done at her start, throwing overboard Pagan culture. 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 intuition,
+modern nations will cease to be anti-historic now that the value of
+man as a man has been asserted, and has even been over-asserted? For
+if such were the case then Italy’s standing out of the game, in order
+to elaborate slowly the historical forces that may contribute to give
+back to the world the ballast it seems to have lost, would appear to
+be in harmony with the developing process of Mind. Nations have their
+dawn, their twilight, and their night, but Mind never rests or sleeps,
+and through their individual characteristics all the races tell more
+or less directly on the whole life of mankind. If Italy had to stand
+aside to let England and France assert the individual worth of the
+most inferior human beings, and work up systems where the weakest may
+be heard in legal circles, then her attitude all through the sixteenth
+century is that of a boxer training for his next match. To rid politics
+and law of the idea that legitimised all authority by appeal to the
+Will of God (as it was commonly understood to be a kind of _Deux ex
+Machina_) something had to be appealed to that could be considered as a
+religious support on the modern side. Nature was upheld as antagonistic
+to superior authority and religious interference. Yet Nature, at least
+to the men of the seventeenth century, was the work of God, and if
+mankind was endowed with a longing, or beset with a necessity for
+society, surely the Creator of mankind was responsible for it. The fact
+is that it was not of the will of God that the jurists and philosophers
+wanted to be rid, for they could have found cogent arguments to uphold
+the thesis, so dear a century later to Rousseau, that God had created
+man free, and that he was therefore at liberty to choose the political
+constitution that suited him best—conforming by so doing to the Will
+of God: it was the authority of men, the authority of tradition, which
+taught that it had always been the natural lot of some men to obey,
+and the natural lot of others to command; and that is far more Pagan
+in its political origin and Aristotelian in its theoretical form than
+Catholic. It was the hierarchy of birth, quite a Pagan notion, that
+men were fighting against in Northern Europe during the sixteenth,
+seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
+
+Aristotle’s first book on politics settles the point for the hellenic
+world. Some men are born to be masters; some are born to be slaves. He
+that is to be a master is born with the qualities that befit command;
+he that is to be a slave is born with the qualities required to fulfil
+orders. Were it not so, Nature would have failed to fit each of them
+for the end to which it brought them into life. Man was what he was to
+be anterior to his birth. As to slavery, as an institution it was to be
+deplored; it was rather sad for the people who were born slaves, and
+terribly immoral at best, but it was an evil that could not be avoided
+inasmuch as it was essential to the nature of society. The metaphysics
+and religion of the day could not conceive of any alteration in the
+nature of things.
+
+The Stoics and Epicureans did improve, but not much, the idea of
+liberty. The best thing for men to do was to know Nature and their
+own natural disposition, not to go against the natural bent of things
+and of their constitution. Thus the part of Fate was reduced and the
+dignity of man asserted. But the reduction and assertion would have
+been more verbal than actual had it not been for the Romans, who with
+their realistic mind could not overlook the fact that man’s _virtus_,
+or lack of it, made a lot of difference in his life. Their religion
+and philosophy though lacked originality and had no adequate notion of
+liberty.
+
+Christianity was to relieve mankind from such a fate. Man is in the
+world to save his soul. The grace of God is necessary to him, but he
+only can achieve his own salvation. If you want your horse to jump,
+as the sportsmen of the old school used to say, give him his head;
+the freedom to use his neck, head and shoulder to the best of his
+ability. If God means man to save his soul, he must have given him
+sufficient freedom to be made responsible. And in fact the proclamation
+of this power of man is the import of the New Testament. Everything
+is possible to him that believeth. This is far from Aristotle, so
+far that men could not at first realise what it meant, 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 realisation.
+
+Man’s liberty, man’s dignity, 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 fact. It could, therefore,
+only be through the greatest misrepresentation of historical facts
+that Pagan times were identified with the cause of liberty and equality
+of men, two ideas that are essentially Christian and were in their
+present form unknown to Paganism. Such perversion of facts cannot be,
+however, ascribed to a wilful adulteration of history. The men who
+upheld it are too many and some are too obviously sincere. Yet on the
+other hand it is impossible to ascribe it to an instinctive foreboding
+of immanence as nowadays understood. The only possible explanation is
+the force of repulsion for the immediate past that is inherent in the
+historical assertion of any new social force. A new age always asserts
+itself by fighting its antecedents and often the very cause of its
+coming to light.
+
+Hobbes, rejecting sovereignty by the grace of God to enforce his own
+conception of the sovereignty of his _Leviathan_ grounded on the
+_Bellum omnium contra omnes_, is merely conforming to the philosophy of
+Nature, which, as materialism, was to him a religion, a new religion
+that must take the place of the old one, at least amongst educated men.
+In its objectivity Nature stood to him as God; an awful divinity that
+had a good deal in common with the God of Calvin in the inalterability
+of its will. But few of the new thinkers had the courage to be as
+coherent as he was. For he was quite aware that the substitution of
+Nature for the God of Christianity, as the ultimate reality to which
+political forms had to be traced back, made for a greater implacability
+of political laws. 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 Ages; and they did not realise that the belief in such
+nature of man was elaborated in the schools of the Middle Ages, 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 angles, it was just as abstract and could no more be proved on
+experimental ground. The nature of man taken as implying the necessity
+of or longing for social arrangements is illustrated in history; but it
+is the essence of history to relate to men the deeds of men, thereby
+is enforced the necessity of having society in order to have history.
+So that isolated man cannot enter history. Of men anterior to society
+we can, therefore, know nothing. But prehistoric times are not of
+necessity presocial; indeed, the art that flourished in such periods
+shows the existence of social intercourse in times of which we have, up
+to now, no historical knowledge. In any case the philosophy of politics
+if it wants to borrow the experimental method of natural science must
+take history for its basis, with all the limitations that this implies,
+in order to reach positive conclusions. The political thinkers of the
+seventeenth century thought and acted as men of deep convictions, but
+of very faulty methods; the world they cast into shape reposed on an
+assumption which is the most metaphysic of all the metaphysic axioms
+they hated so much; it will be more and more obvious through the
+eighteenth century.
+
+Italy stood aside. Italian minds could not have made such a position
+theirs. The attitude of a Bacon, of a Descartes, of a Hobbes, could
+not be assumed in the land of Machiavelli and Bruno, the fathers of
+the idea of history understood as a constructive process of Science
+and Society, of Campanella, the man who foreshadowed in the sixteenth
+century the phenomenologic conception of reality and the notion of
+immanence: which may have been, which was in fact heretic, but is
+undoubtedly the offspring of Christianity, and knows that it is.
+The race whose energy and virility had been maimed by the constant
+contemplation of the past, by thorough identification with the past,
+had been politically stunned like the people of the Bible who turned
+back when they should have been looking and proceeding forward. Italian
+scholars kept assimilating and admiring the philosophical production of
+foreigners, and the more readily praised and the more truly appreciated
+the new theories that they felt farther from imitating them. What they
+could give they gave, in legal and historical erudition, 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 him, just as Scholasticism had prepared the abstract
+ground on which the theories, that were to give their democratic or
+individualistic impulsion to the modern world, flourished two centuries
+after a reaction had started against the abstractness of Scholasticism.
+
+Francesco de Sanctis realises it because he has lived for this oneness
+of Italy, thereby giving it the full reality of an historical person.
+Guicciardini was as interested in the calamities that befell the
+individuals as de Sanctis was in the tragedy of his country, 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 power. He was
+an accurate man, with immense knowledge and great acuteness of mind
+taking each fact in its most minute particularity, but losing sight of
+the importance of such events as the Reformation. He was a naturalist
+and uses the same methods as if he studied vegetables or minerals,
+looking into the intimate structure of facts to find out why they are
+as they are. Men therefore appear in his work like a product of Nature,
+whose actions are as fatally determined as those of an animal. It is
+impossible, therefore, to find in Guicciardini’s twenty books a single
+page alive with the feelings that throb in Machiavelli’s historical
+works; he keeps the calm brow of the naturalist counting the legs of an
+insect. And Italy, until Vico comes, will go on between these two ideas
+of history and society.
+
+Guicciardini sees man free in appearance, but in reality bound to act
+according to the determinations of his character, of his temperament,
+of his circumstances; 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 known.
+
+Machiavelli foreshadows a kind of sociology and in his truly Italian
+synthetic view of history he sees the play of the various forces,
+spiritual forces, that make of the human world a different realm of
+reality from that of nature, where forces exclusively physical are
+at play. “Patria,” liberty, nationality, humanity, social classes,
+interests and passions, are to him forces that move man, but would
+never move a plant or a tree.
+
+But the fact is, to quote again De Sanctis, that Machiavelli is the
+starting point of a period and Guicciardini is the ultimate end of the
+preceding age.
+
+France, Spain, England, Germany and the Netherland, were overrun with
+blood, shed either through the War of Religion or in consequence of
+the Inquisition, in the proceedings of which the governments of the
+different states interfered to further their political interests though
+seldom on the side of mercy. In Italy there was no struggle; men do not
+face death or torture without passionate convictions; and while other
+races, young as they were, had such strong convictions the country
+which had reaped too easy and too rich a harvest between the eleventh
+and fifteenth centuries, had given all that her assimilation of ancient
+wisdom could give, and at the end of her career she sat exhausted on
+the wayside to watch the young ones at play, as a connoisseur watches
+a boxing-match and takes all the hints which may be useful to him.
+Metaphysics could not flourish under such circumstances, as virility is
+the first requisite for original thinking, so Italian scholars stood on
+the watch taking law and thought from abroad.
+
+
+
+
+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 edifice, at once harmonious and imposing, seems the
+realisation of an architectural scheme perfectly in keeping with the
+genius of France. Everything tended to that unification of the country,
+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 sovereign.
+
+The idea of absolute monarchy has never been conceived and realised
+in exactly the same way as in France. M. 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 country. But it has yet to be shown what is really the origin of a
+conception of political reality that so far seems to be unique.
+
+Monarchy was indeed just as absolute in Spain and in Austria. But
+in both countries it remained comparatively feudal. So that the
+_bourgeois_ origin ascribed by M. Bainville to the Capetian Monarchy,
+its intimate relations with the Middle Class amounting to a sort of
+mutual league against the great feudal lords, is sufficient to endow
+it with the modern character that attracts the student, eager to
+penetrate to the living core of the life of political institutions. It
+could not, however, account for the rationality of its development,
+for the harmony and beauty of its historical features. 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
+fascination. 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
+æsthetic.
+
+Modern philosophy, above all in Italy, understands art as the
+expression of the life of mind. Hence, a battle, a treaty of
+peace, a law, a form of government, can be considered an artistic
+masterpiece just as well as a poem or a monument. Now between the
+coronation of Henry IV and that of Louis XIV the monarchy of France
+perfectly expresses all that is positive and, therefore, historically
+constructive in the life of the country. Its spiritual and practical
+forces meet in the king’s person and receive thereby their historical
+realisation.
+
+“_L’Etat c’est moi_,” says Louis XIV. “_Cogito ergo sum_,” says
+Descartes. 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
+certitude, the root of all reality, was identified with the individual
+act of thinking. 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 thing. It is the consequence of sixteen centuries
+of Christianity, and in their mathematical conciseness the two formulas
+are the best proclamation of the genius of France in all its clear,
+simple and luminous logic. They are, however, at the same time a
+revelation of what is weak in that genius. To be so clear, so luminous
+and so simple, French philosophy was bound to be abstract and radical.
+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 life, a fact which was bound to carry in its
+trail the political revolution of the eighteenth and the economic
+one of the nineteenth century. When a government reduces a class to
+political non-existence the part formerly discharged by that class must
+be entrusted to another, 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 state.
+
+France one, under the government of one man. It bears a family likeness
+to the tragedies of Racine and Corneille. Such an idea is great and
+beautiful as _Horace_ and _Le Cid_. But it owes its grandeur to a
+simplicity that condemns it to leave out much of political reality,
+which is indeed as complex and multiform as life itself. Therefore,
+though it is beautiful, its beauty is bound to be a tragic one. When
+the concept had become a fact, when Louis XIV could say _l’Etat c’est
+moi_; when France was at least one under her King, the French monarchy
+was in the position of the bullet that has been shot right in the
+bull’s-eye. The aim is perfectly caught, the steely little thing is
+helplessly stuck there, useless. The funeral knell of absolute monarchy
+is rung by this identification of the Sovereign with the State. As a
+political institution it was perfect. Perfection is static and cannot,
+therefore, belong to life, which moves towards perfection but never is
+perfect.
+
+Politically the feudal nobility was hewn down with the indifference
+with which a venerable forest is razed to the ground to make a French
+garden. 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 architect. In France society was to go on living its
+historical life of eternal alteration and formation. The political
+abolition of the nobility was a most active ferment to breed more
+speedily the modifications to come. The French nobility lost its
+virtues; corrupted by the idleness enforced upon its members, it
+infested the moral atmosphere and this in spite of the very remarkable
+men produced by some of the old stocks. Soon the other classes required
+its social elimination and they wanted it to be as radical as the
+political annihilation had been. 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 minds. The king and his people making one without the
+intervening links of classes—no constitution could be more simple; but
+its realisation required the amputation of what is necessary to the
+life of any monarchy.
+
+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 close. M.
+Jacques Maritain has rightly bestowed on Descartes the epithet of
+revolutionary, but it could be extended to Louis XIV if one did not
+run the risk of seeming paradoxical. For both their self-assertions,
+politically and theoretically absolute, are equally anti-religious and
+anti-historical. The position assumed by Mind whenever man is really
+religious implies self-negation. If God is, He must be infinite and
+Man, by comparison, nothing; at least such is the logical sequence
+of the doctrines upheld by most religious people. 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 begets, man can turn to history
+and trace there intuitively (as the first great thinker of Italy has
+done), the part played by each one of mind’s activities. Religion
+then appears independently of personal conviction, a constant element
+in the life of man, more or less preponderant, always there, as the
+recognition of all that is to man not-self. It is where modern thought
+has failed to realise this, either theoretically or historically, that
+it knows only the first term of the relation which is the basis of
+every social organisation. Liberty and law are correlative terms just
+as are light and shadow. Liberty is the claim of the subject and law
+springs from the recognition of the object. Louis XIV and Descartes,
+thanks to their unbounded selfishness, assert emphatically their
+empirical individuality. For them the self swallows up the other term
+the not-self, that the modern world after them seems to ignore.
+
+Descartes was endowed with the most precious gifts that make the
+scientist and the thinker. 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 mind. Foreigners, even when their
+knowledge of his language is far from perfect, can take his _Discours
+sur la Méthode_ and read it with perfect ease and a feeling of
+intellectual and æsthetic well-being. To read this and to walk through
+the park of Versailles are equally indispensable to understand that
+great century in France. And both walk and reading make very much the
+same impression.
+
+It is true that the reader will easily pick up in the Cartesian
+theories ideas known to St. Augustin and to the Scholastic Doctors
+against whom Descartes reacted so violently. The visitor might just as
+well notice in the park or on the noble façade of the palace lines and
+decorative patterns reminding him of the Renaissance Villas seen in
+Italy, but this does not deprive the palace and its setting of their
+purely French character. The fact is that the seventeenth century with
+the last half of the sixteenth and the first of the eighteenth, appears
+in the life of Mind, i.e. in history, as an Anglo-French period,
+whereas the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth had been in
+their artistic and intellectual production mainly Italian.
+
+The ideas elaborated in France and in England had come from everywhere
+and from all centuries, Italy being chiefly the historical and natural
+agent of communication, a sort of historical point of convergence
+between antiquity and modern times as she is geographically between
+east and west.
+
+The idea of originality, without playing upon words, can be called the
+“original sin” of our modern world; born from the contempt of Bacon and
+Descartes for the past, it is ending now in Futurism and Bolshevism.
+To attempt to create something new without roots in the past in art,
+politics, science or philosophy is not merely absurd, it is impossible.
+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 next. The work of Descartes will live as long as our intellectual
+life lasts. Yet this very work, in which he inaugurates the
+anti-historical method, is the best illustration of the law of history,
+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 centuries.
+
+Louis XIV brought a political form to the precision of a mathematical
+formula, that is to say he made it absolute and by so doing rendered
+the evolution, characteristic of all social organisation, impossible
+for the monarchy he represented. That which is absolute is unalterable.
+To be absolute this French monarchy had to be static; whereas every
+political system must be dynamic. Perfection is the negation of
+development. The person of Louis XIV was the perfect realisation of
+France’s ideal of an absolute Sovereign and as such it was, therefore,
+the conclusion of the process which had brought him to the throne.
+
+The method of English empiricism, which consisted, after Bacon, in
+looking at the exterior world with wide open eyes to get a notion of
+reality based on sense knowledge, was taken up in France with as much
+enthusiasm as the theories of Descartes were taken up in England. The
+two countries balanced each other, France tending to the unity of
+man’s consciousness, England to the full realisation of the world of
+senses. Life obviously is neither of these but their combination or
+more properly their synthesis. So that the mutual influence of both
+countries is the best illustration of the life of mind, single in its
+development, multiform in its manifestation.
+
+What is tragic in the philosophy of Descartes is almost perfectly
+illustrated in his own life. No one has more eloquently proclaimed the
+subjectivity of life and reality than he has through his own scholarly
+selfishness. Only Louis XIV could be his rival in this self-assertion.
+The self-centred monarch, the self-centred scholar, can vie with each
+other. Therefore he may be held to be just as anti-religious and
+anti-historical as Louis XIV; the one could not forget the majesty, the
+other the genius, with which he felt himself invested to bow down in
+worship of the King of Kings, in worship of the Word of eternal thought.
+
+Yet both were believers and convinced Roman Catholics. The
+contradiction of fact thus introduced in their lives find its most
+exquisite expression in the vow of Descartes, 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 soldier, as a man of the world. They
+prevented him from attending freely to the satisfaction of his longing
+for scientific researches. Hence his impatience to retire from this
+vast world, full of rights and duties, where men suffer and require
+help and love. The anti-religiousness of such feeling need not be
+emphasised, it is obviously worse than that of many people who, calling
+themselves atheists, were drawn into deifying nature or their own
+negation of God!
+
+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 Justice, is a most Christian saying. But in the works
+of St. Augustin, where Descartes found it, it implies either the belief
+in God’s presence in the heart of every believer, or the immanence
+of the transcendental self in every empirical self, whereas in
+Descartes’ own writings and mind neither of the two is to be found. His
+rationalism seems brutally to reject belief outside philosophy, outside
+the theoretical and intellectual world altogether. It only _seems_ to
+do so, because it is one of the first stepping-stones of Idealism, 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 bad. Hence the duty of vulgarising
+rational thinking through education, which was to become paramount in
+pedagogy and politics. 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 deeds.
+
+English philosophy received through Hobbes all the rationalism it
+needed to balance the excessive empiricism of Bacon and the world was
+ready for Illuminism, which, originating in England, became one of the
+greatest and noblest movements recorded in history in spite of its many
+flaws.
+
+Italy could not, indeed, offer anything to make up for such rationalism
+and empiricism. With her political virility the whole country was daily
+losing its speculative originality and fecundity, for as Vincenzo Cuoco
+was to realise a century and a half later, the two manifestations of
+man’s genius, political and theoretical, usually go hand in hand. The
+intellectual gifts of Italian scholars were wasted in academic pastimes
+or devoted to works of erudition, which prepared for the genius of Vico
+the materials of his historical vision of reality, but were of little
+avail to counteract the impatience displayed by France and England,
+turning their backs upon history in order to feel free to shake off the
+yoke of every traditional authority. Feeling, intention, worship, so
+many elements of spiritual life, were almost discarded to make room for
+the goddess Reason.
+
+Art and Religion were thus denied in their essence. Art could only be
+at best didactic or hedonistic, it was, therefore, considered at the
+service either of thought as a means of vulgarisation of scientific
+knowledge, or of sensation as capable of causing agreeable emotions.
+As to Religion it was disposed of in a more radical way. Theoretically
+misrepresented, historically ignored, it was to be tolerated by English
+philosophy for practical reasons as a political instrument and as the
+best educative force. It had been useful and necessary in the centuries
+of dark ignorance, but to the century that was to call itself the age
+of light it was a hindrance, an impediment of which mankind was to be
+rid at all cost. Illuminism, that is to say the enlightenment of the
+people, and the anti-religiousness of the philosophers were identified.
+The war waged against religion was confused with the war waged against
+ignorance. One step only was needed to make of ignorance a synonym for
+religion.
+
+Nobody waited to enquire why religion was everywhere and why it was
+always a factor in social life; nobody anyway could have answered the
+question as it would have implied historical research, a synthetic
+view of history, for which no one was fit. The Italians lacked the
+philosophical basis for such work, France and England lacked the turn
+of mind necessary to do it with intelligence. Germany was still in her
+teens until Leibniz came to proclaim the intellectual coming of age of
+his country. Thus religion was a puzzling problem to philosophers and
+the lack of intelligence towards this enigmatic X was to breed a great
+many political difficulties. Religion alone could have made up for the
+oncoming individualism, first social, then economic, which threatened
+universal destruction.
+
+Man was raised to the honours of the altar, hailed as ultimate reality
+in what is most negative and empirical in him. His intellectual
+activity was to become the principle of reality, which indeed it is
+in so far as it is transcendental and, therefore, divine. But the
+seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries could only know this activity
+as far as it is empirical and, therefore, non-divine. Illuminism, with
+all its generosity and noble impulses, was unable to realise what
+transcends the reason and experience of every single man. It was to be
+the lot of Germany and, above all, Italy to conceive in speculative
+form the life of Mind and to realise the natural function of religion
+throughout history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GIAMBATTISTA VICO
+
+
+In their studies of the Neapolitan philosopher, 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
+good. 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 Croce.
+
+Vico is the most Italian of Italy’s thinkers. Yet a close survey of his
+ideas reveals in his works, besides the most Italian of intellectual
+heritage, the presence of the deepest and richest tendencies of the
+modern philosophy of Europe, be it French, English, or German. He is
+thus the best illustration of his own theory. In the man of genius
+the most concrete historical determinations blend with the broadest
+universality of ideas. But his critics have usually chosen to look
+exclusively to either of these according to their own nationality; and
+this way of abstracting from one of his qualities has made him obscure
+and baffling.
+
+While his countrymen lived upon the contribution of France and
+England, Vico, to the naturalistic intuition of atomism, which implies
+individualism in morals and politics, opposed the idealistic intuition
+of history as the developing process of mankind. 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 world. In this he revealed
+himself as a direct son of the Italian Humanism and Renaissance, an
+anachronism, and the fact was nearly fatal to his fame, as this put
+him, as a writer, in a position of great inferiority to Locke or
+Descartes. He never deals with the question he had sat down to treat,
+because he never realised beforehand where he was going, and it was
+only on his way that his mind became properly fixed on the point that
+was obscurely tormenting him. One ought not to read either the titles
+or prefaces of his books, for he usually starts on a traditional and
+even stale matter. Thus it is that starting as a good Platonist to
+write what Michelet took his Scienza Nuoa to be, that is to say a
+philosophy of history, he got stranded in the deepest speculation on
+the nature of man’s mind quite in contradiction to the doctrine of
+Plato. He had begun by considering the origin of man’s intellectual
+activity. The difficulty was great, but he casually observes that
+whatever the difficulty of the problem and its obscurity, one always
+has the steady light of the conviction that _the world of the Gentile
+nations is the achievement of men; and that the principles of it must
+be found in the nature of our human mind and in the force of our
+understanding_.
+
+Such proclamation of man’s power to create his own world, the only
+historical world, was indeed a revolution and Rousseau’s theories,
+evolved to ensure the liberty of man to arrange society to suit his
+requirements, are childish compared to this sublime thought of a man
+who was a Catholic with all the humility and simplicity of a child.
+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 Mind. But before
+starting to expound the forms of Mind’s activity, for which he claimed
+the right of historical citizenship, it may be good to note that Vico’s
+criticism or continuation of previous systems was simply dialectical;
+inasmuch as he contradicted the main thesis of his favourite authors
+just as well as those of Descartes, who was his pet aversion, or
+accepted them to transform them. For instance, he took the Cartesian
+certitude and opposed it to truth; calling certain that which is the
+result of particularising knowledge if one may term it so, or of
+knowledge directed to the particular. And he took the nature of man as
+Grotius or Hobbes had misunderstood it, a kind of mechanism the laws
+of which were as fatally unalterable as the instinct of beasts, and
+changed it into the nature of Mind, quite spiritual and—there is no
+other word—Christian.
+
+Vico turned to the periods of history which were the most remote from
+the psychology of his time. Consequently he was led to study the
+inferior forms of mind such as imagination, violence, simplicity;
+whereas others had meditated only upon the nature of man as they found
+him refined by Religion and laws, and had grounded their theories on
+his mature intellect. They ignored the imagination of his youth. They
+studied his will morally trained and overlooked the wild passions of
+his forefathers. It is, therefore, 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 nature; and gave concrete ground for the
+assertion of man’s spiritual rights and duties.
+
+Art, or as he calls it, poetry, is not born through the caprice of man
+to give pleasure or clothe philosophic sayings. It was born out of
+natural necessity, it is in short the first operation of man’s mind.
+Man, before he can conceive a notion, such as table or dog, realises
+them with an operation not of the intellect, but of his imagination.
+Before he can reflect with a pure mind, he perceives with emotion.
+Before he can speak in prose he speaks in verses. The nearer poetry
+gets to the particular, the better it is; the higher reflection rises
+towards the universal the more perfect it is. Yet if one can say that
+the poet is the sense of mankind and philosophy its intellect, one’s
+conclusion coincides with the saying of Scholasticism, _Nihil est in
+intellectu qui prius non fuerit in sensu_, since without poetry it is
+impossible to have philosophy and civilisation. After many views on the
+subject, often contradictory, his real idea is undoubtedly that the
+first form of mind is poetry, anterior to the intellect and free from
+reflection and reason. Myths, he holds, do not refer inevitably to real
+men, they are essentially historical truth under the form it is wont to
+take in primitive minds. Any myth is an individual, as Hercules, and
+accomplishes individual actions—as he kills the Hydra or cleanses the
+stables—but it is also a concept, the notion of useful and glorious
+activity. It is, therefore, both a universal as the expression of a
+concept and a creation of man’s imagination as a particular fancy.
+
+Passing to morality and to society, although he reacted against
+rationalism, Vico’s assertion of the irrational has nothing to do with
+Rousseau’s. He took for his ground history, literature, archæology and
+above all, law. Thus his first discovery led him to substitute for the
+Golden Age that had been postulated as the initial stage of mankind,
+“the natural state of man,” an obscure period in which man did not
+differ much from the wild beasts and was at best an irrational and
+non-intellectual being. He was to develop the great and immortal notion
+that lay hidden at the core of “jus naturalism,” the notion of society
+as immanent in man, which had been in the air since Thomas Aquinas had
+spoken of it as of a sixth sense of man.
+
+Utilitarianism is the first target on which Vico opens fire, and he
+takes it as Hobbes and Spinoza had formulated it. Utility cannot be a
+sufficient ground for morals since it springs from the temporal part
+of man whilst morals are grounded on his eternal part. No principle
+of utilitarianism, whatever the forms ascribed to it by philosophers,
+can justify the process of differentiation, which is the constant
+development of social organisations. Deceit, force, need, imply as
+already in existence the society they are supposed to have produced.
+How could the supposedly happy and simple first owners of the soil be
+deceived into giving up their claims, if they had no desire whatever
+and no relation of any kind. For relations imply some kind of social
+state even if tacitly agreed upon. As to force, the first rulers were
+not merely strong in their individual force; 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 tendencies;
+and their law was force indeed, but force _a natura præstantiori
+dictata_. The real ground of society is, therefore, moral, and as such
+essentially spiritual.
+
+Yet at first sight Vico’s view of the origin of law and society
+appears very much akin to that of “jus naturalism”; but as soon as
+it is understood that Vico’s notion of man’s nature is the Christian
+or spiritual one, then the difference is quite evident. Law to him is
+natural to man because what is not natural can neither stay nor last.
+Fear is certainly the origin of society; not, however, the mere fear of
+wild beasts or hunger but the fear of oneself; fear of solitude due to
+remorse and shame. Out of shame Vico sees arising the senses of honour,
+fidelity, probity, trust in promises, truth in words, honesty in deeds.
+So that society comes to have moral consciousness for its ground,
+and one can indeed consider society as the realisation of man’s best
+nature, of man’s spiritual conscience. 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 men. 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 uncertain.
+
+The nature of this fear, manifesting itself in remorse or shame, of
+this sense of decency giving rise to moral consciousness, is easy
+for us to understand on account of the systematic treatment Mind has
+received in subsequent studies, above all in the works of Croce and
+Gentile. This fear is what we usually call self-consciousness; 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 him. Now in
+this case common language, as in many instances, lays a trap for our
+understanding, since at first sight it seems to imply that the child’s
+uneasiness of manners is due to a self-centred conception of himself;
+whereas it is in fact his realising the importance of his surroundings
+that makes him wish to please his elders, to attract their notice, or
+to appease their indignation when he feels guilty. It is, therefore,
+the consciousness of the non-self that we term self-consciousness.
+But this trap is easily avoided, for philosophy knows nowadays that
+it is impossible to reach self-consciousness except through the
+conscience of that which we are not, for _We_ without the rest of
+the world in opposition to which we are _We_, means nothing at all.
+Thus the self-awe in which Vico sees the first origin of society is
+the consciousness man has of his not-self, of the exterior world, or,
+to use an image, of the immense shadow that surrounds him and is in
+reality his own negativity, all that which he is not. 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 Power.
+
+Vico’s is not a speculative hypothesis. Primitive men wandered savage
+and ferocious, without family ties or matrimonial bonds, were the prey
+of the wildest passions. Whence could they receive the law that would
+prevent their mutual destruction? They cannot be saved by the wisdom
+of men since human wisdom does not exist as yet, neither by God, He
+has retired among His chosen people and left to its fate the rest of
+mankind. But He has left them the character of men and their humanity
+is sufficient to save them. Thunder strikes them with fear, and the
+consciousness of their impotency, of their own limitation, suggests
+the confused and obscure notion of that which is not limited. And to
+appease the Almightiness of this infinite and enjoy its favour they
+refrain from some things and do others. They refrain from satisfying
+some of their physical cravings and Mind’s liberty is the result; so
+that liberty is born with her twin sister, moral law, out of the fear
+of God, out of the awe-inspiring consciousness of the not-self. The
+land becomes covered with altars; the caves behold the union of men and
+women eager to ensure the Divine favour to their nuptials; the soil is
+broken to receive the body of the dead who return to the gods. Ethics
+are born with the three fundamental institutions of society, the cult
+of the Deity, matrimony as the first call of society, the veneration of
+the dead as the first assertion of immortality.
+
+Why has Croce been able to state, after this energetic assertion of
+Vico on the essentially religious origin of society, that the father
+of the philosophy of Mind agrees with the school of natural law in
+their purely immanent notion of ethics? Because like them he constructs
+his science of society independently of revelation. 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 People. It is not on the idea of law and its
+origin that he criticised Grotius, Pufendorf, and the rest, it is their
+idea of religion that is distinctly quite alien to his.
+
+Religion for Vico can be understood first as a conception of reality as
+such; and this is the reason why it is in Gentile’s theories one of the
+essential moments of Mind as recognition of the not-self, or object.
+Second, it belongs to practical reality as the basis of ethics. In this
+case religion is the very essence of ethics as it is the very essence
+of truth.
+
+It is, therefore, evident that what Vico intuitively, perhaps,
+unconsciously, is striving to assert is the eternity of religion,
+historically proved apart from any revelation. Thus in his search for
+the ground of morality he can abstract from positive religion, but how
+could he abstract from the knowledge of truth, or more than knowledge,
+the consciousness of truth? Plutarch, after describing the primitive
+religions and their horrors, wonders if it would not have been better
+not to have had any religion than to worship the gods in such impious
+ways. And Vico, after quoting him, 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 time, whereas
+nothing ever grew on atheism. There is no such thing as historical or
+social life without a religion, full either of tenderness or ferocity,
+rational or fantastic, but in any case providing man with the idea,
+more or less clear, more or less noble, that there is something which
+transcends the individual, in which all individuals weld into one, and
+which provides man’s morality with the object of his moral will, and
+thereby means Law.
+
+In his understanding of the period in which man had been a brute,
+Vico was much nearer to the Bible than the Protestants had been. He
+accepted as a matter of fact the distinction between the Gentiles and
+the Jews, as implying the radical privation of any supernatural help
+bestowed on the former, and he thought of them as being in a pre-moral
+state, a state that was indeed devoid of morality, but full of moral
+tendencies, and from which mankind emerged through the realisation of
+those tendencies. Such realisation is not on the other hand the effect
+of a Divine grace, it is NATURAL, due merely to the development of
+the natural light granted to every man that comes to life. Man’s free
+will is weak and between passions and virtue might succumb if he was
+not upheld in his efforts by Providence. For Vico makes an absolute
+distinction between the grace of God and Providence. The grace of God,
+in which he firmly believed, is an extraordinary help granted to some
+men and particularly to the Chosen People; Providence is the ordinary
+help of God granted to all men as their birthright so to speak, as
+inherent in their nature as men.
+
+Vico stood henceforth as the best antidote to the dangerous side
+of Anglo-French speculation. The philosophy of Mind had yet to be
+developed, but it was sufficiently asserted to claim man and all his
+activities as belonging to spiritual reality, to historical reality.
+Thus what Vico called Providence provided the ground for a more human,
+that is to say, more spiritual, idea of liberty, just when the men who
+were going to popularise Illuminism were preparing for their task. But
+his was a far more difficult idea, and less palatable as well, for his
+liberty springing as it does from Religion, hand in hand with morality,
+is a double-faced divinity. One never can, according to such a
+conception of life, grasp liberty without law, or enjoy a right without
+satisfying the corresponding duty.
+
+Passing from religion to law, Vico in his objective understanding of
+history rejects a justice that should consist in measuring everything,
+for says he, first this would not be the philosophy but the mathematics
+of law; 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
+deserts, and thus to maintain that which is the only true equality
+of men. The natural law, according to him, was born at first under
+the form of just desires, just violences; then it took the form of
+moral fables; ultimately it was asserted in all its rationality and
+generosity. Away goes with this the abstract and anti-historic notion
+of an eternal and natural law, superior to positive laws. Vico goes
+on bowing to the _jus naturale philosophorum_ but instead of putting
+it high above history, he looks for it exclusively where it can be
+found—that is to say in history, making it thus historical.
+
+After accepting Plato’s idea of an eternal Republic, Vico breaks it
+to pieces to come out with a quite different conception of his own.
+The only really eternal Republic is the eternal process of history
+in all the variety and succession of its modes of realisation, from
+the man-brute down to Plato. Every single truth has its practical
+manifestation, its practical consequences; to think in this or that way
+implies living and acting in this or that way. The divorce of theory
+and practice resulting from the difficulties that arose a century
+before between scientific men and their churches is here absolutely
+annulled.
+
+Vico calls men to realise that in the human world of history, the
+only one real to man, since it is the work of man as Nature is the
+work of God, thought and action go hand in hand. Theories bring
+inevitably a modification of practical life. Man does not exist, at
+least not to our knowledge, as an individual devoid of a social and
+therefore historical frame. Art is the moment in which man moves in a
+self-centred world, abstracting from the universal, and is therefore
+the subjective moment of liberty, the moment of intuition. Religion
+is the moment in which man stands full of awe in front of the world
+which is his not-self, abstracting from the individual he is, and is
+therefore the objective moment of Law, the one link from the intuitive
+to the rational realisation of life as morality and, therefore,
+society. History, however, never shows the one apart from the other,
+as nature never shows one of two correlative terms absolutely apart
+from the other. Light or darkness may be prevalent, both are always
+there. Liberty and law have alternately held their sway over our
+modern, that is to say Christian world, and their synthesis may now
+be called into being by the grandsons of Vico. 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 reacting;
+and reacting through not a retrograde process, but through a forward
+movement which shall enforce liberty as the correlative term of law,
+and allow religion to discharge its function as the essential basis of
+man’s spiritual life and not as an instrument of politics.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ILLUMINISM IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE
+
+
+The characteristic that distinguishes English Illuminism is the
+reasonable adaptation of its theories to practical circumstances; this
+is best illustrated in the greatest man it has produced. Locke was for
+the preservation of faith in Revelation and tried to make it agree with
+reason. 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 man. He sees in the Scriptures the revelation
+of truths which would have been out of reach of man’s natural powers,
+limited as they were to sense knowledge. Such a view was characteristic
+of the fair-mindedness of the practical and political man, but it held
+a snare in the sanction thus granted to the most unphilosophical and
+unhistorical notion of Deism and natural religion. 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 objectivism. His ethics take human felicity as the
+higher aim of theoretical and practical activity, which is not original
+at all, but has the merit of being quite consistent with his subjective
+assertions. 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 Rousseau. But nowhere does this inconsistency
+of his practical application with his main system appear as clearly as
+in his work on the State.
+
+William of Orange stands to Locke as Cromwell does to Hobbes, not
+that the king can be compared to the dictator, but his reign beheld
+the inauguration of the political system which is the greatest gift
+of England to mankind; 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 life, that is to say in history. Yet
+Locke was enforcing the distinction with all his might to avoid the
+inconsistency already noticed between the theoretical and practical
+aspects of his work. As Hobbes had done before him in England, and
+Grotius in Holland, he saw the basis of the State in a contract, but
+he was the first (although Algernon Sydney had prepared public opinion
+for such an idea) to assert that the collective will was embodied not
+in any single person, but in the majority of the people. There he was
+perfectly consistent with his gnoseology, the multiplicity of the data
+of sense knowledge destroyed the unity of the metaphysical conception.
+Only legislation, however, fell to the share of the majority; the
+executive and foreign policy were to be entrusted to hereditary
+monarchs. 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 development, which was the last assertion of
+historical necessities. Hence politics went on gradually losing touch
+with historical consciousness.
+
+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 system. Theories springing from a synthetic conception of life
+do not want readjusting to practical life, do not want a period of
+assimilation under their theoretical form and another of elaboration
+into practical systems. 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 Diritto_, both of 1916,
+followed at five years’ distance by their political application by the
+Fascists who had, so to speak, no direct knowledge of such works; to
+say nothing of his pedagogy, the application of which the author has
+had the opportunity of carrying out with her own pupils. But then such
+theories are conceived without abstracting one minute from practical
+life, and their basis is history and society as they are in real life.
+Of Fascism the same may be said; its idealism does not prevent it from
+being the most thoroughly practical and realistic of movements.
+
+The philosophy of the seventeenth century had, however, made this
+consistency of theory and practice an obviously unrealisable chimera
+for the men of the eighteenth century, and whilst French rationalism
+brought people to think of rational theories as capable of radically
+reforming society, English empiricism held that ideas may work very
+well in theory and very badly in practice. Such a distinction was the
+source of great difficulties. If thought and action were the terms of
+an irreductible dualism it was natural to say
+
+  Meliora video; deteriora sequor.
+
+Indeed, 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
+problem. They had separated religion from philosophy, religion from law
+and politics, and as they had the _jus naturale_ they must have natural
+morals. 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 mentioned. It could, in fact, be traced to the
+Stoic school and even farther back. But this did not make things easier
+to the people who held positive religions to be useless, whilst on
+the other hand they were ready to admit their value as establishments
+providing for the moral care of the lower classes. In their abstention
+from history, 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 wrong. They could not realise that
+this function of the churches is merely a consequence of the position
+of the believer towards his divinity, that such a position brings man
+to realise what is to him not-self, thereby giving to the moral law the
+objectivity which alone can free it from the constant alteration of
+selfish motives, and bestow the stability necessary to its efficiency.
+
+A natural sense of right and wrong was acknowledged in order to
+find in Man himself an explanation of his moral life. This original
+predisposition, that was to ensure autonomy to man’s higher life
+having been admitted, 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 man. Whilst such researches
+proceeded, 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 theory, the Earl
+of Shaftesbury, a friend of Locke, contributed the best of all these
+theories. He claimed the autonomy of morals, freeing it no less from
+physiological than from theological fetters. 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
+nature. Goodness, righteousness, and virtue are real of themselves, a
+reality; they can be conceived and understood; they cannot be inferred
+from anything else. Why he did not work out so original a notion is
+easily understood; the philosophy of his time afforded him little
+more than psychology, and his personal gifts and breeding fitted him
+rather for æsthetics than for so arduous a task; hence it was perfectly
+natural that his idea should have developed into a real eudemonism.
+The nature of virtue is to him harmony, he thus blends the conclusions
+of materialism and of the doctrine which upheld the social instinct
+of man; the supremacy was to be ascribed to the egoistic motives by
+the school of Hobbes, to the sense of altruism by the others. To
+Shaftesbury each of these schools held half of the truth and only
+the combination of both tendencies could produce in their harmony
+real morality. Neither lax nor ascetic morals must result from the
+harmonious combination of the two opposites. Such a theory implies the
+perfection of the individual as the ultimate end of all intellectual
+life; it throws light on the nobler side of Illuminism, and if it is
+not theoretically sound it is the blending of all that was best in a
+movement that was generous in its optimism.
+
+The variety of the grounds which were ascribed to morality is
+sufficient to betray the original flaw of such philosophy. Even Lord
+Shaftesbury had been unfaithful to Locke, mainly owing to his own
+strong sense of the æsthetic, but also owing to the unsuitability of
+the great philosopher’s doctrine, as it was understood then, as a basis
+for a theory of ethics. Thus Utilitarianism came into being. “The best
+for the greatest number,” was to remain as the ideal or ideology of
+Illuminism; and the best in question became more and more the material
+best, and less and less the moral best. After the natural sense of
+sociability which had taken the place of the will of God at the basis
+of the state, after the natural sense of right and wrong which had been
+elaborated as a substitute for the Decalogue, very little was left
+of the _tabula rasa_ idea of man’s soul upheld by Locke. 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 life; and Nature was
+gradually opposed to history as rational to irrational.
+
+This natural religiousness had had its first English assertor in
+Herbert of Cherbury. To him man’s soul is far from being _tabula rasa_;
+it is a book that opens naturally and displays its hidden treasure.
+And John Toland, in his efforts to retrieve free thinking from the
+interference of the State, determines the limitation of the state’s
+jurisdiction, to which the citizen’s _actions_ must be subject but
+never his _opinions_; 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 liberty.
+Then the negativeness of any liberal government was obvious, 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 broken. Thus
+again the radical difference between educated and uneducated which had
+been fostered by the cultural movement of Humanism and Renaissance,
+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 condition. This cautious exclusion of
+the people from the new intellectual religion was a condemnation; the
+rational cult proved an artificial theory and could have no vitality.
+Yet it would be a perversion of facts to present it as due to the
+personal feeling of Toland or any other man. It was the consequence
+both of the predominance of Rational Reality in the systems then in
+honour, 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
+world. 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 time, then the
+impossibility of introducing social partitions in the life of the Mind.
+Of religion they only saw its practical organisation in the different
+churches; of the need from which the pre-Christian forms of religion
+had sprung they had not the slightest suspicion.
+
+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
+man. Christianity had revealed the profound humanity, that is to say
+spirituality, of the world, and Man, feeling himself to be the main
+agent of God in the world, realised his subjective importance. Only God
+had remained above him—only the notion of God’s presence could enforce
+objective law. It is not the Decalogue and the Church’s precepts which
+are meant here. It is the recognition, essential to religion, of a
+reality existing besides his own self that compels man to realise such
+objectivity of law. St. Paul laid an emphatic stress on the fact. But
+the _caritas sibi_ is that which raises the subject, raises us and
+enlarges our capacity until we are capable of taking in the object,
+all that we are not, the world in short; what modern philosophy calls
+the not-self. When man does realise this objectivity, this distinction
+of the world from him, his attitude is that of respect not only
+towards God but towards the world. Thus we have the religiousness,
+that Fascism is striving to enforce until it will pervade the whole
+of life, practical and theoretical life, since it does not part them.
+This notion of religiousness, however, is ultra-modern, and could not
+have been conceived in pre-Kantian days, in pre-Hegelian, pre-Gentilian
+days. It is not mediæval by any means, and Illuminism is one of the
+stages through which Mind has had to pass, to realise a subject capable
+of taking in the object without going back to Pagan objectivism.
+For this objective world must at all cost be such through subjective
+objectivity. If it is to remain a Christian world in its very
+objectivity it must remain a human world, the world of man, the world
+of the subject whose religious recognition of his not-self is a supreme
+self-assertion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before the end of the century Reason fell from her enthroned glory,
+and sentiment was glorified as the purest activity of man’s soul. So
+that the century of light ended by raising the less rational motives
+of man’s life to semi-divine honours. This reaction was due to the
+unilateral dogmatism assumed by philosophy in France owing to the
+political circumstances of the country.
+
+With a democratic sense that is partly due to the democratic origin of
+the French monarchy, which to be absolute, had to rest on the support
+of the people, the thinkers of France did not dream of keeping their
+conclusions to themselves. What they considered true should be public.
+Perhaps, in their feeling that it is the duty of the man of science
+to communicate to the people the result of his studies, 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 divulgation. It is frequently remarked that they were the
+real champions of Illuminism inasmuch as they claimed the right of the
+people to be enlightened; the idea of Truth which prompted such a claim
+is the loftiest part of their contribution to philosophy.
+
+The French mathematical mentality, after having exported Descartes,
+had imported Newton, and as Hobbes and, before him, Bacon, had come to
+France to find the yeast they needed to develop their own theories, so
+now men like Voltaire and Rousseau made their leaven out of Locke’s
+and Hume’s doctrines and studied the political institutions of
+England. In France, from Montaigne, from Pascal, men had learned the
+cautious prudence, 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 world, tired of religious struggles and the emphatic
+expressions of dogmatism on all sides; it was due also to his charming
+style and the purity of his French mind. So French is he, so much a man
+of the West, that his charm is felt alike by French and Anglo-Saxon
+minds. One cannot resist him. In his analytic scepticism he is so
+logically methodic, that his style is like the colour of a piece of
+antique bronze, inviting the onlooker to touch it whilst its lines,
+its lights and shadows reveal the powerful mind of the sculptor.
+Montaigne through his very respect for the Church helped to ruin the
+religious spirit of his countrymen, and the genius of Pascal could not
+have made up for it, 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 time. Both mysticism and scepticism take their practical
+form in Pierre Bayle.
+
+Few men ever enjoyed the gift of sympathy with which he was endowed
+because few men are so superlatively sincere. He does not renounce
+religion, he is indeed quite a religious man, but his religion
+is negative on account of his mysticism as a believer and of his
+scepticism as a scientist. To him the Thomist and Lockian point of
+view of the super-rationality of the Revelation is an illusion.
+In perfect sincerity he could say _credo quia absurdum_, and like
+Tertullian proclaim definitely the divorce of science from religion, of
+rationality from irrationality.
+
+His next move was to divorce morality from religion. Men could be
+excellent in Pagan times and they can be wicked in Christian times, yet
+Christianity is superior to Paganism; obviously religious opinions are
+independent of the morality of men.
+
+He then passed to politics. 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 done, and since it had nothing to do with
+morals the Church could have nothing to do with man as a citizen. This
+evidently made not only for tolerance, but for indifference on the part
+of the state in all religious matters.
+
+Expelled from science, morality, and politics, 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 time.
+
+Voltaire overshadows the century as Louis XIV had done the preceding
+one. His greatness does not depend on his contribution to philosophy,
+but on his immense efficiency as a propagandist of the conclusions
+reached by philosophy. 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 theories. Less sincere than Bayle, he took
+up his sceptical conclusions, without, however, sharing his mysticism,
+and in the prose of the greatest French writer of the century, he
+set to work to popularise the destructive criticisms of all dogmas.
+Voltaire may have been convinced that dogmas were harmful, but as he
+did not bring forward anything to put in their stead his influence
+was negative. What it would have been without the constant recall to
+present experience of English empiricism cannot be gauged; as it was,
+present experience was rather an incentive to dissolve and destroy the
+whole social order than to build; and towards past experiences there
+could be no recall whatsoever, or rather there was only one and an
+original one, but it could not be heard.
+
+To Voltaire history offered no direct lesson. 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 itself. His clearness of sight limited his outlook to the
+present, 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 country. His religiousness is strongly
+tinged with utilitarianism, as he held, like many Englishmen had
+done, that the purpose of Churches was to act as moral check to the
+lower class. All these fathers of Liberalism and Radicalism are more
+aristocrats than democrats. Their worship of culture and reason makes
+for political tyranny and a social system of caste as distinct as
+that of the Indians. Hence it evoked a reaction, and this found its
+spokesman in Jean Jacques Rousseau. People were tired of dry reason and
+its negativeness, they felt parched and longed for affirmative works;
+he came out, a man of genius, devoid of the mathematical and classical
+grounding of the others; entirely led by feelings and, alternately, by
+the most generous and lowest impulses he was a democrat.
+
+Until Rousseau appeared the writers on political matters had been
+either followers of the _jus naturalism_ or of the constitutionalist
+schools.
+
+In Rousseau two streams mingle their waters, for he is an artist as
+well as the most original thinker France had after Bayle. As an artist
+he is the spokesman of his generation, and it is as such that his
+contemporaries took to him as they did in spite of his disreputable
+personal life. As a thinker, although the statement may sound very
+daring, he ought to share with Berkeley and Hume the honour of being
+considered as one who made the way for Kant. His were mere intuitions;
+they could not be more as he had no scientific or philosophic training.
+But as Professor Saitta has pointed out, his reaction against
+rationalism transcends very much what was grasped by most of his
+readers and even sometimes by recent critics. His passionate claim for
+the important part played by sentiment in the life of man and by all
+irrational forces, original though it is, is the impulsive reaction
+of an artist, whereas by the time he wrote, Italy had already had for
+some quarter of a century the works of a man who had claimed, with
+a speculative genius far superior to his, the acknowledgment of all
+the different activities of mind. And Giambattista Vico had been a
+jurist and an historian as well as a philosopher. So that his notion
+of Man was capable of taking in, not only his rational activity, or
+his sense relation to the exterior world, or his sentimental life,
+or his religious position, as rationalism, empiricism, sensism and
+mysticism had respectively done; but the whole range of man’s spiritual
+manifestations. Therefore, is it that Rousseau’s greatest intuitions
+are those that could not affect Italy in a speculative way. The man who
+was to pick them up was a German whose genius had all the robustness
+of his country at that stage, coming as it was to the fore after having
+fed on the intellectual production of Italy, France and England.
+
+What affected Italian thought most was the weakest part of Rousseau.
+The idea to which he owed his immediate fame is that nature made man
+happy and good, but that society had made him bad and unhappy. He was
+thereby contradicting rationalism and empiricism, he was flinging
+his glove in the face of all Illuminism. And he could do it not on
+philosophical ground, but merely calling upon life to justify his
+assertion. That age of light was an age of corruption and misery. The
+lack of religion had brought in its trail the lack of seriousness; the
+abstract subjectivism of a century had made of each man a self-centred
+world. Liberty was, so to speak, constantly cried for out of tune since
+it could not be accompanied by the assertion of law. 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 best; they had denied the citizens the liberty of declaring
+such contract lapsed when it had ceased to satisfy them. As this was
+due to their training in a philosophy that considered the world as
+a machine, Rousseau had no reason to follow them nor to see in the
+state a mechanism subject to laws as inalterable as those of nature.
+Therefore he realised the real essence of liberty as inalienable. It
+could be transferred, not alienated. Strong in this sense of liberty
+Man must fight all the unnatural edifice of society which, according to
+him, is the cause of all immorality through the inequalities of men it
+begets.
+
+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 man, every single man, with the consciousness of
+his sovereignty. Of the two tendencies which have been compared to two
+streams, one was the naturalistic individualism rooted in the thoughts
+of his contemporaries and which he expressed merely as an artist,
+as the greatest artist of the time; the other was the idealistic
+universalism which was personal to him as a thinker, but that was bound
+to remain a source of fleeting intuitions on account of his incapacity
+to raise it to speculative consciousness. He roused a powerful echo
+where men like Voltaire and the Encyclopædists failed to command
+attention; 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 readers,
+even of the lowest classes. It was the lowest side of his doctrines
+that spread amongst the people, the part which appealed to envy and
+hatred, two very powerful levers indeed, but of which Rousseau might
+not have chosen to make use had he been able to choose. 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 state; but all this comes to nought on account of
+his lacking a theoretical ground for such a notion, and he is obliged
+to fall back on the intellectual stock of his time; in spite of his
+genius, in spite of all sentimental intuition of a universal will, he
+is thrown back on a will which is merely the sum, the numerical sum,
+of the single wills. Thus it is that he gave us the system which
+enthrones quantity while it aims at quality.
+
+His first principle that men are made all alike by Nature, happy and
+good, is, as most of the philosophy against which he was the first
+to react with the power of genius, perfectly anti-historical and,
+therefore, abstract. 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 Communism. If the
+nature of man, thus hypothetically accepted, is as abstract and as
+unreal as an algebraical axiom, it was bound to lead to political and
+economic hypothesis just as abstract and as unreal. Since history
+shows us in the class struggles and individual competitions the main
+spring of progress, the condition _sine qua non_ of all social life,
+it is impossible even to dream of the elimination of such class and
+individual differences. Life would cease to be dynamic, cease to be
+a moving process, it would be static, everything being brought to a
+standstill, which is death.
+
+To look at real life, 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 Law_, another century and a half was needed. 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 Mind, not as the handmaids of reason but in
+their full autonomy and necessity. Mind is no longer pure reason, and
+philosophy does not exclude but imply religion and art, the two moments
+of law and liberty, although such distinction of activities does not
+destroy the vital unity of man’s conscience. Mankind is no longer the
+arithmetical sum of X beings reduced to the same type and value, 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
+country. Consequently, for the abstract man of Rousseau a Man can be
+now substituted who never is Man as Man, but Man in his full reality
+as son, as brother, as husband, as father, as worker, as citizen, as
+believer, as artist.
+
+To make this possible, however, a long process was required, the first
+stage being Rousseau and the application of his theories even in their
+negativity. For to reach Fascism, which really puts men on the same
+level, it was necessary to break through class distinctions as they
+existed then, that is to say as static partitions meant to stay as they
+were. It was necessary so that power should slip from the hands of
+people, who considered it as their natural birthright, into the hands
+of those who are actually fit to hold it. 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 other.
+
+And, as the philosophy of Italy proclaims, ethical reality is neither
+of the subject in itself, nor of the object, but of their actual
+relation; so Fascism does not allow class elimination but protects
+class competition as the best means of raising the spiritual and
+economical standard of the nation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN ITALY
+
+
+It is not surprising that German philosophy found an adoptive country
+in Italy. Most of the speculative notions of Kant were formulated
+fourteen years before Kant was born in Vico’s _De Antiquissima Italorum
+Sapientia_, and Hegel’s most original conception, forty-five years
+before Stuttgart had the honour of producing him, was acted upon in the
+_Scienza Nova_. Even if Vico had never been realised in his totality,
+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 cogency. Vico,
+independent of any knowledge of Leibniz’s theories, had come to share
+several of his ideas merely because they faced the same problems and
+both had practical and synthetic speculative minds. Also Vico with
+his hostility for rationalism, his sympathy for empiricism and his
+criticism of both found himself very nearly in what was to be Kant’s
+position. His preparation, which was more legal and historical and
+archæological than Kant’s, closed the way to a clear and precise view;
+but it was superior in one sense inasmuch as that preparation provided
+him with a richer, a fuller view of reality, thus allowing him to
+foreshadow Hegel as well as Kant.
+
+The greatest man who reacted against Rationalism and Empiricism in
+politics as factors of a sterilising Utilitarianism, reducing man to
+the most abject egoism, Mazzini, is an intuitive genius like Rousseau
+and like him a son of the eighteenth century, rising above his
+generation. But whilst the one showed little or no sense of history the
+other saw it as it really is, animated by ideas and created by the will
+of men. One writer had had a very great influence on the great Genoese,
+who never knew even as much as his name, Vincenzo Cuoco. He was what
+might be called a writer of political pedagogy, as the problems he
+faced are always practical and usually political. The education
+of which he was an ardent apostle was the civic education of the
+inhabitants of Italy; and like all men whose aim is practical he sets
+his ideal in life and not in science. He is the pedagogue of the first
+dawn of Italy’s national consciousness at the time of Napoleon. Born
+in 1770 in the Molise he died in Naples in 1823. Among the Neapolitan
+Jacobins he stood as an exception in the lack of enthusiasm with which
+he viewed the French Revolution. He had assimilated all the ideas of
+the French writers, but he was a student of all social, political and
+economical problems; so that it is no wonder that he should have come,
+through the influence of F. M. Pagano, to respect Vico and look askance
+at the new systems. His fundamental principle was that human reality is
+historical reality, that is to say the reality which is not, but for
+ever becomes, and goes on becoming and developing not through extrinsic
+causes, but through its own activity, intrinsic and autonomous; that
+such activity transcends the single activities and their historical
+determination; its source is identified by him as Divine Providence.
+Such was the principle from which moved all Vico’s philosophy, and
+though Cuoco could not even suspect the speculative value of it, he
+realised it practically, and it was to him a luminous beacon, 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 troubles.
+
+Thus he could not be satisfied with a French Constitution because Vico
+had taught that “governments must be drawn in conformity with the
+nature of the men who are to be governed....” The French Revolution
+seemed to him drawn for ideal men who did not exist. According to
+him a constitution must conform to the nature of the people and be
+produced by the people, through the few men who are fit to interpret
+its historical will and realise its particular requirements. 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 Vico. Not that this fact is considered here as a
+coincidence—if Mussolini is the genius of Italy which he is hailed
+to be, it is but natural that he should realise in its practical
+application a theory which is so perfectly Italian. A constitution
+cannot be “good for every nation.” If it is supposed to be, it means
+it is good for nobody. 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 man, and as such eternal; it is
+bound to be always temporary and historically determined, according to
+the vices and qualities, according to the ways and the history of the
+people.
+
+In this brief exposition of what were Vincenzo Cuoco’s most important
+ideas on politics, we meet constantly with sentences that might be met
+from the pen or on the lips of Mussolini. Censure can do little to
+reform the moral and political life of man. Feasts and premiums are
+better means; 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 bad. This is pure Fascism. The government must not act
+as a brake, but rather as a propeller or a helm. Public virtue must be
+nursed, not by diminishing the avidity of the lower classes, but by
+showing them the way to satisfy it. _The love of work_ is the one means
+of regenerating the lower classes. A good government must, therefore,
+destroy the callings that are unproductive; 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 callings. “Work,” writes Cuoco,
+just as a Fascist minister might, “will make us independent of the
+nations upon which we depend.” The Love of Man for his country must
+spring from self respect; and this, indeed, is as far as one could go
+more than a hundred years ago towards the identification of state and
+citizen, which is the basis of Fascism, and has been formulated in
+its speculative form by Giovanni Gentile in 1916. 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 people, for the unification could
+only be attained by awakening national consciousness in the single
+consciences. Cuoco called this the formation of an Italian public
+spirit.
+
+When this follower of Vico in 1802 reached Milan, capital of the
+Cisalpine Republic, Melzi realised his value and entrusted him with
+the foundation and direction of the first _Giornale d’Italia_. Four
+articles written in 1804 are probably those read and meditated upon by
+Mazzini and are of such a quality that they could be written to-day.
+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 reality. The spiritual building up of
+the citizen is the real conquest of political autonomy. To achieve
+such a task it was necessary to foster the love of agriculture, and of
+the militia—compare Mussolini—and to replace self-love and personal
+vanity with the love of the country and national pride. The “City” to
+Cuoco is not one thing and the citizens another, the prosperity of the
+former depends on the moral and practical efficiency of the latter.
+He was full of contempt for the dreamers who thought that everything
+may be expected from the laws. But the men who roused him to real
+passion were those who argued that the Army, the navy, commerce,
+were cares that should be left to the great nations, to England and
+France for instance. To this he objected that those countries had been
+small, smaller than the Italian states, and had grown through the
+steadiness and efficiency of their national will. Such efficiency and
+steadiness of national will he called “public spirit.” The regions
+whose inhabitants did not think of being or becoming a great country,
+would never be nations. For the small states there was one law; either
+to become great or perish. 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 1911.
+
+Again in 1804, reviewing in his _Giornale d’Italia_ a philosophical
+work, Cuoco expresses the desire to see philosophy flourishing in
+Italy, for the development of speculative thought was in close
+relation with the political state of society, and it was important
+that a nation should not be theoretically sterile. “It is a long time
+since we received it,” he writes, “first from France with the works
+of Descartes, then from England with those of Locke. The periods of
+political greatness of each nation always coincide with those of its
+philosophical greatness. The first strength is Mind; weak is the arm of
+those who lack it or think they do.” 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 “heroicising” the
+people of his country through giving them an heroic will and a national
+conscience.
+
+No wonder that Mazzini should have realised what Rousseau could never
+see. The ethical nature of what goes under the name of “Nation” is a
+Mazzinian concept. When Hegel speculatively proclaimed this it had been
+already intuitively conceived, artistically expressed and religiously
+observed by the men to whom Mazzini’s ardent faith was like an electric
+current. The Mazzinian articles of faith were few, and had never been
+theoretically worked out. This helped their adoption by people who
+would never have grasped the import of a huge system. Whilst Rosmini
+and Gioberti were read by the few, Mazzini was on the lips and throbbed
+in the hearts of the many, so that the war he waged against materialism
+and individualism was effective. His mystic feeling spreads in young
+hearts as easily now as it did then. Lads take to sacrifice far more
+easily than men of a more mature age and Mazzini’s declarations all
+proclaimed self-sacrifice, self-effacement, even his idea of liberty.
+
+At the very time in which the Anglo-French idea of political reality
+was introduced in Italy, to rouse the country once more into life with
+the magic word liberty, this young man, a poet, an inspired prophet,
+was ready with a new meaning for that word. 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 body, whereas the
+self which can conceive of liberty, and therefore realise it, is the
+self everyone of us feels when in the silent recess of Mind we have
+a right to claim, a feeling to express, an intuition to cast into
+sound or colour, and a faith through which we link ourselves to the
+political, family, artistic and religious reality that has given us the
+consciousness of such right or aroused in us such family, artistic, or
+religious sense. To him political liberty could only mean for Italians
+the liberty of shaking off foreign rule and creating the nation. It was
+not and could not be the liberty to attend one’s private affairs as
+one wished, for this last meaning of the word had been elaborated in
+his country through Humanism and the Renaissance, and it was not only
+obsolete, but was the cause of Italy’s corruption and decay.
+
+The idea of empirical and transcendental self, implicit in this
+conception of liberty, came to produce the second article of faith
+in the Mazzinian doctrine. If man were to try creating a new natural
+kingdom and add it to the animal, vegetable and mineral offered to us
+by Nature, his attempt would be a vain endeavour. But political reality
+does not belong to the world of Nature but to the world of Mind, in
+which man is a Creator, and where nothing is really impossible to him
+that believeth. 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 Nature. Thereby it forbids any idea of
+its being static. No one can find at his birth his nation ready-made
+for him; everyone must work to the best of his moral, intellectual,
+and bodily power to create it; since the moment the citizens cease to
+work at this, their political task, the country starts ceasing to be
+a nation and becomes a region whilst the citizens become inhabitants.
+The nation is not a geographical unit, it is not even history
+empirically understood, but it is history as far as history is process,
+development, programme, mission and sacrifice; in a word, human life.
+
+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 Humanism. The Italians had identified themselves with
+ancient Rome, and this had brought them to think of their national
+glory and history as a ready-made affair. In their country they saw
+the Temple of the past, and exploited their ruins morally as well
+as financially. Whilst the other countries of the western world had
+been fighting and labouring, for the conquest of their political
+and financial status, Italy had sat on her past glories and proudly
+wrapping herself in Cicero’s or Cæsar’s toga had taken tips from the
+whole world. Mazzini had grasped enough of Vico’s notion of man as
+creator of the historical world to bring to the fore, in the average
+man’s mind, the idea that was the import of all the historical
+philosophy of Italy and, therefore, the positive side of his country’s
+historical mentality.
+
+Neither Cuoco nor Mazzini were philosophers, their task was, so to
+speak, to realise philosophy, to introduce other people’s theories
+into life, and this they did uncommonly well both of them, although
+Mazzini played in the Risorgimento so eminent a part that his gigantic
+historical figure overshadows that of Cuoco. But Cuoco, through his
+_Giornale d’Italia_ and his subsequent writings had the greatest
+influence on the best poets and writers of the period, to begin with
+on Foscolo and Manzoni. For the first time since Savonarola’s days
+intellectual life in Italy beheld a spontaneous revival of Catholic
+thinking, and this, strong enough since it counted men as great as
+Gioberti, Rosmini and Manzoni, was not due to the initiative of
+the Church. It was spontaneous, intellectually so, and Vico may be
+considered as its forerunner. What was paramount was perhaps the moral
+system of Rosmini. He started out to fight Kant’s moral system as unfit
+for use on account of the subjective ground of the Kantian imperative,
+and meaning to fight it he developed it and found new ground for it.
+The moral, 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 conscience. 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 country. To pass from
+Rosmini and Gioberti to Croce and Gentile, the thinkers who herald the
+coming of Italy as a modern nation, as much was needed as to pass
+from Leibniz, living in the days in which German intellectual life and
+national conscience could be at best the object of a mystical worship,
+to Kant’s time, when Europe realised that there were actually such
+things as German metaphysics and a German nation.
+
+In both cases the philosophy has to be, and is, synthetic, for in
+both cases the exigency that opens life with the pungency of need,
+of deficiency, of negativeness, is the thirst for national assertion
+and foreign recognition. 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 countries.
+
+After the unfortunate war of ’48–’49, Gioberti went into exile and
+philosophy was overtaken according to Prof. G. de Ruggiero by an
+invincible drowsiness. Drowsy, obscure, unconscious of their own
+positions, are epithets which can be justly bestowed on the thinkers of
+the time, for eclecticism prevails without the historical culture that
+alone can make it fertile. 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 consciousness. Among the Positivists, inferior
+followers of foreign tendencies, several remain first-rate historians,
+thanks to a few sentences of Vico kept like the seeds in Noah’s
+ark, and sufficient to prevent them from falling into a materialist
+metaphysic which would have been a sterilising curse to the newborn
+nation. 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 instance, of as good an historian as
+Villari; but this was not unconscious. After the efforts which they had
+made to get rid of pseudo-idealistic metaphysic they did not want to
+entangle themselves in another metaphysic, were it to be materialist.
+On the other hand, they did not want, or were not able, to make theirs
+the position of English positivists. Ardigo, for instance, although he
+is the best Italian thinker that upheld Positivism, cannot be compared
+to a Spencer or a Mill.
+
+But speculative voices are never silenced, although they may be hushed,
+and the spiritual exigencies which had produced Gioberti and Rosmini
+were slowly working themselves out in other minds. Neo-Kantianism
+gave birth in Italy to a series of historical studies in the field
+of philosophy, 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 done. Whilst Neo-Kantians achieve
+little theoretically, they do so much historically that one may say
+that the works of such men as Fiorentino, Tocco, and others prepared
+the ground for Spaventa and de Sanctis who in their turn have given
+us Croce and Gentile. All read German, English and French, besides
+Latin and Greek; so that we can say that the speculative theories of
+the whole western world were studied in their schools; and that, like
+the child who becomes self-conscious as he gradually realises the
+worth and importance of the people surrounding him, Italy has grown to
+speculative self-consciousness through the close study of universal
+speculation and of the history of her national political life, national
+art, national literature, national speculative theories, until her
+historians came to the idea of history as the co-ordination of all the
+different branches.
+
+Bertrando Spaventa taught in the university of Napoli, and, a staunch
+Hegelian, he criticised Hegel in the same creative way as Vico had
+criticised Descartes and Locke. He developed and continued the
+intuition which is at the basis of all Hegelian system as Hegel could
+not have done, inasmuch as Spaventa realises Hegel’s logic in its
+historical position, that is to say as the fulfilment of Descartes’
+claim. Thinking means causing to the French mind, whilst to Hegel it is
+not merely causing it is creating. But Gioberti had not only expressed
+the Hegelian intuition; he had completed it; thinking is creating,
+but to him proving also is creating. And Spaventa, rich with all the
+history of speculative thought, realised Hegel’s logic and prepared it
+to enter life, thanks to Gioberti’s contribution, although Gioberti
+himself had been far from realising it. The speculative possibilities
+of the Cartesian _Cogito_ are exploited to the full; whereas they
+had been left aside by Hegel. Vico’s _factum et verum convertuntur_,
+pragmatically understood by the Positivists, is here realised as a
+process. But, as is the wont of Italian thinkers, 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 dialectic.
+
+Hegel’s most original and fecund motive was thus nearing its
+theoretical realisation at the hands of Spaventa, whilst Vico’s
+conception of life was practically illustrated by Francesco de
+Sanctis, whose important part in the shaping out of Italy’s present
+mentality cannot be overstated. 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 Sanctis. In his _Storia della
+letteratura Italiana_ the philosophy of mind receives more than a
+perfect illustration, an æsthetic rendering that makes the most
+abstruse notion of dialectic a tangible object of meditation to the
+average reader. Æsthetic rendering is here used as excluding anything
+like theoretic exposition; and such æsthetic quality is insured by the
+great critic’s own gifts as an artist. His reading and philosophic
+preparation are incredible, not to be gauged; they are, however,
+assimilated by him very much in the way in which a great artist
+assimilates his technique and intellectual experience.
+
+Doubtless Michelangelo, moving to sketch the ceiling of the Sistine
+Chapel or the last panel of it, is carrying in himself the experience,
+the artistic experience of eighteen centuries. Yet he must have
+forgotten it all, at least as objective knowledge, to find it in
+himself flesh of his flesh, marrow of his bones, soul of his soul;
+so that he could move freely as an artist, in all the spontaneity
+and, therefore, liberty of creation. The character of his work is
+personal, so highly personal that it includes all the determinations
+which single out Buonarroti as a man of that land, of that religion
+and even of that particular moment of his religion, of that time, of
+such and such temperament and inclination, and singles out the whole of
+his production as belonging to that particular moment of the Italian
+Renaissance. The greater is the artist’s personality, the better he
+discharges his twofold function of microcosm and macrocosm of his
+world. It is an illusion of the nineteenth century to believe that
+personality in art makes for atomistic individualism. Just as it is an
+absurd error of the people who judge Mussolini and Fascism to believe
+that they have grown without roots. They would then be superposed
+to history, superfluous, unnecessary; whereas the great artist and
+the great politician belong to life, and in fact are historical life
+working itself out to expression or political realisation.
+
+The _Storia della letteratura Italiana_, like an immense relief,
+unfurls the development of the life of Mind in Italy from the dawn
+of the Italian mentality right up to the days of the critic. For de
+Sanctis, Art is Mind individualising itself through the senses in the
+transparency of intuition; Art in other words, is life reaching the
+luminosity of form. This blending, this perfectly intimate welding of
+reason and sense, of universal and particular is Art. It is, therefore,
+individuality, not individuality taken as it is too often—as the
+contrary of universality, but as its realisation in the particular.
+For this relation of the universal and particular is constitutive of
+art, which is, therefore, neither individual arbitrariness, nor the
+mere reflection of life in the artist’s fancy, but life itself coming
+through its own development to intuitive transparency. Life cannot be a
+matter of which art would be the form; and religion, politics, science
+as elements of life are not alien to art or indifferent to it. None of
+this element can exist without art, and history leaves no doubt on the
+point—each new religion, new political system, new scientific progress
+is not to be parted from the artistic production of the time.
+
+De Sanctis, like a medical student, follows step by step the corruption
+of Italy, gradually growing with the decay of religious and political
+consciousness, above all when Humanism, having reached its climax
+in the works of Poliziano, stopped providing a sincere feeling to
+the scholars who ceased to worship antiquity some fifty years after
+him. De Sanctis was a man of the Risorgimento he had laboured and
+suffered for the independence of his country, hoped and despaired of
+the future greatness of his countrymen. He was aware that in spite of
+Machiavelli, of Vico, of Alfieri, of Cuoco, of Mazzini, the greatest
+number of his countrymen had, so to speak, no souls. Knowing as he did
+that religion was the basis of all relation and the first cause of all
+real social progress, seeing in it the keystone of man’s recognition
+of the exterior world, he refrained in all his books from attacking
+not only religion, but the Church as well; although he was a staunch
+anti-clerical in politics until Rome was taken from the Pope. 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 byword, and the forces
+of reconstruction from Machiavelli onward. To the reading public he
+presented it as a mirror, in the transparency of Art showing the whole
+spiritual life of the people with its political consequences. He bade
+them realise that corruption had been the cause of foreign rule and
+tyranny, not foreign rule and tyranny the cause of corruption.
+
+This was new indeed, 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 corruption.
+No wonder, therefore, that de Sanctis’ masterpiece, published in 1871,
+should have been practically laid aside for more than twenty-five years
+awaiting Croce and Gentile to take it up. The public that responded to
+their call when it came was exactly the one which de Sanctis would have
+wished to reach. The boys took de Sanctis up, and what is more curious
+they took him as their idea-provider; inasmuch as the big volumes,
+which could not be included in the schools’ syllabus, were turned to in
+the hour of need, when they had to write essays and found themselves
+short of ideas. No method of popularising and assimilation could match
+this, for the ideas thus borrowed by the young had to be exposed,
+proved and illustrated. The school lads and university men who enlisted
+as volunteers in the war, were mostly spiritual sons of de Sanctis, one
+of them being Mussolini, who told the author that he was a worshipper
+of that work. In the same way the idea of Croce and Gentile have spread
+even among people unfit to realise their theoretical import. Never,
+however, could they spread like those of de Sanctis, but he is so much
+so completely their spiritual father that most of their speculative
+notions can be found as intuitions in de Sanctis’ pages. There the boys
+get so familiar with them that when they come to a Gentilian theory,
+and the teacher takes the trouble to introduce to them the fundamental
+intuition, they grasp it at once as a matter of course and wonder why
+the teacher should think it so difficult to explain, for instance, the
+intimate relation of thought and action, the necessity of religion and
+the like.
+
+
+
+
+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
+strange. 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 mind. Hence the
+necessity of including Croce in this account of the pedigree of the
+tendencies which have been realised in politics by Benito Mussolini.
+This naturally does not imply that all the ideas acted upon by Fascists
+are to be found in the theories of Croce, but that certain needs of
+Italian minds, more or less consciously expressed during the eighteenth
+and nineteenth centuries, had been formulated and worked out by Croce,
+who had either found them in de Sanctis or had developed them on lines
+suggested to him by that great critic.
+
+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 mind. 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 nonsense. An ineffable poem is not a poem at
+all, a harmony defying expression is not a harmony at all, a vision
+transcending colours and lines, shadow and light is not a vision at
+all. Italians had to be reminded of the necessity of being realistic;
+their greatness as well as the greatness of ancient Rome had always
+rested upon a sound sense of the relation between means and end. He
+described the Italian genius as a disposition rather to identify the
+end and means than to fit the end to the means. He enforced this
+claim, not only for artistic creation, but for historical researches
+or theoretical speculation as well. He had evidently realised the
+short-comings of men such as Gioberti and Rosmini. It was much
+better to start on particular problems with an adequate preparation,
+and develop them into speculative theories, than to start with an
+indifferent preparation on vital questions and come to inadequate
+conclusions.
+
+Now if there could be in history such a thing as good luck, the
+friendship of Croce and Gentile, their flourishing at the same time,
+could be considered the most wonderful piece of good luck for Italy. By
+luck, however, we usually mean a certain combination of circumstances
+escaping our attention. Moreover, their being contemporaries of
+Mussolini, the _one_ man fit to create a political world capable of
+bringing into living reality their most difficult conceptions—very
+often, in fact generally, 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 Mussolini. 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 genius, speculative,
+political or artistic.
+
+Any and every practical activity, says Croce, implies theoretical
+activity, since no action can be performed without knowledge. This
+however is not to be separated from the action; for the two forms
+of the spirit are distinct, not separate. Thus in any action, while
+the practical activity is explicit, the theoretical activity which
+is knowledge is implicit; in fact they are _concomitant_. The man
+of thought can no more think than walk without using his will; the
+importance of the will is just as great for the thinker or the artist
+as it is for the so-called practical man. 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 truth.
+
+A distinction is, however, made by Croce between the knowledge required
+for a practical act, such as the disposing of a regiment of infantry
+for a review, and that of the philosopher or the artist. The one
+is an intuition, the other is a conception, and to make the ground
+of a volition you want both, for the combination is _historical_
+knowledge. There, obviously enough, Croce reveals himself a true son of
+Machiavelli, Vico, and de Sanctis. The Florentine secretary had been
+hinting as much when he insisted on the necessity of our knowing the
+_actual truth about things_ (since _human things are always moving_),
+in order to govern _in harmony with the times_.
+
+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
+history. To them, the natural realm of action being history, it was
+manifest that any knowledge or theory is liable to be acted upon only
+in so far as it is historical; and such knowledge becomes, under the
+name of condition of fact, the ground of Croce’s conception of the
+necessity and liberty of man’s will.
+
+To the generally accepted ideas of means and end Croce was to bring a
+most radical change. First he proceeds to prove that what is known as
+the end, the purpose, or the aim is not to be distinguished from the
+will. When I wash my hands my purpose is obviously that I should have
+them clean; but then it is equally obvious that this means that I want
+them to be clean. Turning to the means, the washing of my hands in
+order to have them clean, supposes a condition of fact which means the
+availableness of soap and water, for I could not will to wash my hands
+if I had neither soap nor water. 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 clean. So that purpose and means are all included in my act of
+will, which is nothing more nor less than the actual act of washing my
+hands. If the situation of fact did not include soap and water I could
+at best _wish_ to wash them, never _will_ to do so.
+
+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 means. Thus the men of the Risorgimento
+had to vary their purpose and to reconsider the means to attain it
+after and before each campaign, having to take as their actual will
+only that the realisation of which was in harmony with the then actual
+situation of fact. So that we can say that their real will, the will
+which created modern Italy, was exclusively that general will which was
+individualised in their many splendid deeds of heroism or renunciations
+of their former plans or ideals; these had been formed without the
+historical knowledge which alone could make them realise what was the
+situation of fact.
+
+Now a good deal of admiration is usually bestowed on people of
+good-will and of pure intentions. Here, however, the very existence of
+such good-will, such pure intentions, is denied. 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 so. For he
+does not will to do so as long as he thinks it is impossible. A wish
+of this kind has no value either economically or morally. Whatever the
+circumstances, if he knows them well, 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 fire. When Machiavelli tried to form
+a Tuscan Militia to free Florence from her trouble, he did not succeed;
+but when he left his boisterous and rustic friends over their wine
+and retired to the small library of his modest villa, he did the only
+civic duty that was left to him to perform; he plunged his lancet into
+the corrupted body of his country and prepared the way for the coming
+centuries. Criticism, that is to say negative criticism, when the
+country is in danger, or suggestion as to the ideal thing to be done,
+unless they are part of a plan of reform so in keeping with facts that
+it can be immediately acted upon, are merely pretending to be acts of
+will. I cannot keep by my fireside or lean at my window deploring the
+things which are going on and pretend that “I will to alter them.”
+
+Yet it is often said that we can will the good in the abstract, while
+unable to will it in the concrete, and this means simply that we may
+have good intentions and yet behave badly. The answer to this has been
+already given; it may be well, however, to state it once more. Willing
+in the abstract, willing without acting accordingly, is equivalent to
+not-willing, since, according to Croce, a volition implies a situation
+historically determined from which it arises as an act equally
+determined and concrete.
+
+The importance assigned in this theory to the knowledge of the actual
+situation of fact, and consequently to the historical judgment,
+invests with the greatest importance the possibility of error. Such
+possibility is, however, excluded by Croce from the theoretical realm
+of mind; for lack of knowledge, ignorance, is not error. It belongs to
+practical activity and we cannot err unwillingly. All errors are due
+to an interference of the will with our apprehension of reality; and
+as any volition is an assertion of our liberty we are responsible for
+it. Everyone knows that immoderate passions or illegitimate interests
+lead insidiously into error; that we err in order to be quick and
+finish, or to obtain for ourselves undeserved repose—that we err by
+acquiescence in old ideas, that is to say, in order not to allow
+ourselves to be disturbed in our repose, and to prolong it unduly, and
+so on. 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 will.
+It thus becomes perfectly legitimate and wise to use practical measures
+to induce those who err to correct themselves, punishing them when this
+can be of any use. Croce’s defence of the Holy Inquisition, be it of
+the old Romans against the Christians, of Catholics against heretics,
+or of Protestants against Catholics must not be found surprising. It is
+the logical conclusion of his view on the responsibility for error;
+and he is not to be found shirking the consequences of his system
+any more than the Fascists. 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 activity. The necessity of having a single man responsible
+for anyone of the public services has been mostly realised in
+Anglo-Saxon countries; but where bureaucracy flourishes it is usually a
+Board, a Committee, in a word an anonymous body which takes decisions
+and steps for which nobody in particular is responsible. Therefore, to
+any complaint the answer must be “we thought; the committee held; it
+was generally supposed; the majority came to the conclusion ... that
+...” In such case nobody stands responsible; and each member of the
+Committee, or Board, throws on the others all the weight of the unhappy
+step or decision.
+
+With Croce’s theories such vagueness is destroyed at its root. The
+will of the people who take a step is their taking of the step, and
+both action and volition spring from their historical knowledge of
+the actual situation of fact. Such knowledge is therefore part of
+the action. The responsibility thus includes the assuming of the
+information necessary to the taking of the decision. Naturally this
+has always been the case, where man’s responsibility is really of
+importance. On board a ship, for instance, the officer in command has
+always known that his responsibility includes this knowledge. Ignorance
+of fact is the greatest fault whenever a decision has to be taken,
+whether the importance of the decision be great or small. This however,
+must not be held to imply the judging of an action according to its
+success. Historical judgments are not to be passed on the result of
+past actions; historical judgment must be passed on acts, not on facts.
+
+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 whole; and one might say that the action depends on the will
+of man and the event on the will of God. According to this theory the
+action of the man who shoots at Mussolini is the manifestation of his
+will, and his failure is the manifestation of God’s will; because the
+will of the whole, including the will of the chauffeur, who is driving
+Mussolini’s car, the wills of the people crowding the edge of the
+street, 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
+idol, which are also volition-actions, determine the event; and this
+is usually termed Providence, or the rationality of history. Thus when
+foreigners, even those who do not approve of Mussolini’s government,
+and Italians, either religiously or coldly, repeat at each new attempt,
+“the hand of God is on his head,” the conviction which they express is
+perfectly in keeping with Croce’s view, and is by no means equivalent
+to fatalism.
+
+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 universe. 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 works. This double contribution of Italy to the conception
+of conduct, if not an entirely new idea of liberty, provides two
+very original views on that problem, one of those which have always
+tormented humanity.
+
+The first great step made by Croce was the consequences of his having
+denied any possible distinction between the volition and the action;
+for thus he was able to assert the oneness of liberty. We must no
+longer speak of a liberty of will and a liberty of action.
+
+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 1542 and
+found after the tumult on the top of a church-tower. The terror had
+aroused in him such a will that he had climbed there. As a rule the
+paralytic does not will because he knows he cannot, what he can do at
+the most is to wish that he was in a different condition. It is quite
+inexact to say that he who is threatened and yields to the threat
+is deprived of his freedom of action. The old formula _coacti tamen
+volunt_ says as much. Whenever people have been clamouring for greater
+freedom of action, what they really wanted was to have the conditions
+of fact altered. “Everyone knows,” says Croce,[6] “that no _vultus
+instantis tyranni_ can extinguish the freedom of the soul; no ruler,
+be he ever so strong and violent, can prevent a rebellion, or when all
+else fails, a noble death outwardly affirming the freedom within.”
+
+Every step onward in Croce’s theories is admirably consequent upon the
+statements that have preceded it. As man in his theoretical activity
+apprehends the world and by knowing it makes it his, so through
+practical activity he collaborates in its creation. The second being
+grounded in the first, a will independent of knowing is unthinkable.
+The blind will is not will; the true will has eyes.[7] Without this
+it would be difficult to see how actions could be both free and
+necessary. Indeed one can say that up to these Italian theories all the
+contentions on liberty were waged between two tendencies, one leading
+to the ever-recurrent conclusions of Determinism, the other to the
+assertion of free will. 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 volition.
+
+Volition thus is not considered as arising in the void, but in a
+definite situation, under definite historical conditions, in relation
+to an event which cannot be eliminated. When the situation changes the
+act of will changes. This amounts to saying that it is necessitated by
+the situation in which it arises. But it also means that such act of
+will is free. For it does not make one with the situation, neither does
+it produce a duplicate of it. The volition-action produces something
+different, that is, something new; therefore it is initiative,
+creation, an act of freedom. Were it not so, a volition would not be an
+act of will and reality would not change through the action of men, it
+would not become, would not grow upon itself.
+
+“This consciousness of necessity and liberty inseparably united is
+found in all men of action, in all political geniuses, who are never
+inert or reckless: they feel themselves at once bound and not bound;
+they always conform to facts, but always rise above them. The fatuous,
+on the other hand, oscillate between the passive acceptance of the
+given situation and the sterile attempt to overleap it, that is, to
+leap over their own shadow. They are consequently now inert, now rash.
+They, therefore, do not fix or conclude anything, they do not act; or,
+if they do, it is always according to what of the actual situation they
+have understood, and what of initiative they have displayed.”[8]
+
+If Benedetto Croce had been a prophet he could not have better
+contrasted Mussolini’s way of proceeding, always surrounded by experts
+and never the slave of data, with the way in which former governments
+proceeded in Italy, when ministers thought that by the grace of the
+people they had received some sort of super-natural light to discharge
+their duty. No practical activity could have been as vigorous as
+the theoretical reaction of Croce and Gentile against the futility,
+the abstractness, the pessimism, and above all the materialism that
+were slowly but surely destroying the third Italy! But their joint
+philosophical campaign, however brilliant it may have been, could not
+arouse the working masses to the new gospel of civic life. This had to
+be undertaken by a man of faith, endowed with the gifts that make the
+statesman and the popular leader. 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 action. The situation of fact is the same for
+all three, and they therefore arise for the same purpose although they
+endeavour to realise it through very different means.
+
+Since man’s action, his volition-action, is free, 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 not. Thus again the character
+of responsibility is emphasised in all human actions. Croce objects
+very strongly to the way in which criminal lawyers put a poor madman
+on a level with the guilty, for he who is mad is partially dead.
+Practical good and evil can be now identified with will and anti-will,
+with freedom and anti-freedom, with the reality of the will and its
+unreality. For evil, when real, does not exist save in the good, which
+opposes and conquers it; it is, therefore, merely the negative of good,
+and it would be impossible to find an act of will distinctly willing
+that which is evil as such. A man may want to intoxicate himself with
+alcohol, 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 cares. Hence that which he expects from drink is good. Such
+negativity of evil has always been current among theologians even
+before the days of Thomas Aquinas; but the theory deduced by Croce from
+it is quite original.
+
+All practical activity is either economic, or both economic and moral.
+The economic activity is that which wills and effects only what
+corresponds to the condition of fact in which a man finds himself; the
+ethical activity, although it corresponds to these conditions, is that
+which transcends them.
+
+Therefore, any act of the individual’s will is economic, but to be
+moral it must be an act of the universal will. The former is judged by
+the greater or less coherence of the action in itself, the other by
+its greater or less coherence in respect to the universal end which
+transcends the individual. No act can be moral without being economic,
+for however universal it may be in its meaning my action must be mine
+in order to be something concrete and individually determined. In
+practical life we do not meet with morality as a universal, but always
+with a determinate moral volition. On the other hand, it is easy to
+see that our actions always obey a rational law, even when moral law
+is suppressed; so that, when every inclination that transcends the
+individual has been set aside, it is necessary to will this or that
+coherently, not to oscillate between two or more volitions at the same
+time. And if we succeed in really obtaining our desire, if, while the
+moral consciousness is for the moment suspended within us, we abandon
+ourselves to the execution of a project of vengeance and execute a
+masterpiece of ability, even when, in this case, human society does
+not approve, we for our part feel satisfied, at least so long as the
+suspension of the moral consciousness lasts; for we have done what
+we wanted to do, we have tasted, though but for a little while, the
+pleasure of the gods.
+
+The economic form of activity we easily recognise as individual,
+hedonistic, utilitarian, and economic; the moral form is just as
+easily identified. To be moral, an action must first satisfy us as
+individuals occupying a definite point of time and space, and must also
+satisfy in us the transcendental being who defies time and space. Croce
+having made this distinction absolutely clear, could face the question
+concerning the nature of law.
+
+To him law is a _volitional act_ concerning a _class_ of actions.
+Therefore, where the volitional element or the element of class is
+wanting, there cannot be law. Obviously, however, the law is abstract;
+the act of will is, according to Croce, always of the individual,
+and the element of class is sufficient to deprive the law of anything
+like concrete life, be it an individual law or a social law. Since
+the freedom of human actions is logically bound up with his notion
+of practical activity, it is impossible to object that there is an
+essential difference between the programme of life laid down by any
+single man for himself, the programme of action laid down by any
+association, and the laws laid down by the state, the first being
+merely a matter of acceptance and the last relying on compulsion.
+Indeed, it is obvious enough that by compulsion one usually means
+the alternative of complying with the law or facing a penalty. Such
+alternative is the ground of a choice, and the citizen usually chooses,
+but always freely chooses, to obey the law rather than endure the
+penalty. The fact that some men do rebel is sufficient to prove that
+freedom cannot be abolished by compulsion.
+
+Then what is the essential difference between individual and social
+law? An attempt is usually made to differentiate them by saying that
+the latter has emanated from and is sustained by a _supreme power_. But
+where is the seat of this supreme power? Surely not in anything like a
+super-individual, dominating individuals. It is only to be found in the
+individuals themselves. And in this case its power and value correspond
+with the power of the individuals who compose it; it is the law of a
+circle empirically considered to be larger and stronger, but whose will
+is law in so far as the individuals composing it spontaneously conform
+to such a will, because they recognise the convenience of doing so.
+Monarchs who believed themselves to be all-powerful, have realised
+at certain moments that their power rested in a universal consensus
+of opinion, failing which their power vanished, or was reduced to a
+gesture of solitary command, not far from being ridiculous.
+
+Going back to the definition of laws as _volitional_ acts concerning
+classes of actions, Croce shows that the so-called laws of nature or
+of grammar are no laws at all, because the act of will is lacking in
+them. Neither is the jurist, quietly elaborating rules from cases, a
+legislator. His excogitations will have to wait for a man of will, who
+alone, and _sword in hand_, will endow them with the character of law.
+On the other hand the so-called moral law, economic law, are no laws
+at all inasmuch as they lack the element of class! “Will the good,”
+“Will the true,” “Will the useful,” are all statements in which a
+volition is expressed, but then the object of such will is invariably
+the _universal_, whereas laws have for object something _general_; a
+_class_, not a concept. In short moral law, logical law, or economic
+law ought to be called principles instead of laws.
+
+The character of laws being general and not universal, is perfectly in
+keeping with their mutability; since actual conditions are constantly
+changing. It is necessary to add new laws to the old, to retouch these
+or to abolish them altogether. Philosophically speaking, there is but
+one cause of changing the laws, viz., the will that in its liberty
+produces the new law in new conditions of fact. The question whether
+we should recognise Conservatism or Revolution as the fundamental
+concept of practical life, does not concern Croce in the least. For him
+every Conservative is also Revolutionary, since he is always obliged
+to adapt to the new facts the law that he wishes to preserve. Every
+Revolutionary is also a Conservative, since he is obliged to start
+from certain laws that he preserves, at any rate provisionally, that
+he may change others and substitute for them new laws, which he in
+his turn intends to preserve. Cavour, to use Croce’s own example, was
+a Conservative in respect of certain problems, and revolutionary in
+respect of others, to such a degree that he seemed to the Mazzinians to
+be a Conservative and to the clericals and legitimists a Revolutionary.
+
+The demand for an eternal code, a universal, rational, or natural
+justice, in its claim to fix the transitory, is in open contradiction
+with the historical and, therefore, contingent character of laws.
+Were Natural Law permitted to enforce itself once for all we should
+witness, with the formation and application of the eternal code, the
+cessation _ipso facto_ of Development, the end of History, the death of
+Life and the dissolution of Reality. Such an end of the world cannot
+take place because, if it is possible to develop theories which are in
+contradiction to life, it is quite impossible to make them concrete
+and actual: God, that is to say Reality, does not allow this to be
+done. Of such theories the best examples are surely Absolute Monarchy
+and Communism. Both as an ideal present themselves as an absolute, a
+perfect form of government and, therefore, would be, if realised, the
+end of life. 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 institutions, and from the new
+needs the new projects which will bring about new institutions.
+
+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 passing, such as the improvement
+of working-class conditions, both materially and intellectually, is
+indeed what should have been its real aim. But Providence permits
+men to act upon their own motives; and well it may, since the will
+of the whole can always have the last word. Communists have done all
+they that have in the belief that it was done only in the process of
+getting nearer to their ultimate aim, the abolition of classes. The
+kings of France who, little by little, destroyed the Feudal order, and
+by so doing brought about the unification of France and the rise of
+the _bourgeoisie_, may have thought that they were merely working for
+the establishment of an absolute monarchy. Their real work, that is to
+say the task which was laid out for them by Providence, 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 vassals. But when this was achieved the absoluteness in their
+conception of monarchy was bound to be the cause of its fall. For had
+it been possible it would have meant the cessation of development.
+A form of government if it is absolute is perfect, and it is the
+imperfection which calls for further development. Now Communism makes
+the same mistake when aiming at bringing about so perfect a society
+that it would not even need a government. If this came to be it would
+be the end of the world.
+
+But this is anticipating Mussolini’s realisation of the fact, and it
+may be sufficient to state that Croce’s ideas, stated here together,
+were scattered explicitly in several essays published between 1897
+and 1900, and collected for the first time in 1907 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 universities.
+
+On this point of the essential mutability of laws and institutions,
+Croce lays a great stress. “We often meet in history with projects
+of new laws which are said to be better than the old, or good by
+comparison with those judged more or less bad, the new ones being
+proposed as _natural_ or _rational_ justice, whilst the old ones
+are rejected as unnatural or irrational, just as passionate erotic
+temperaments, uninstructed by the experience of their past, believe
+with the utmost seriousness that their new love will be constant and
+eternal. Such ‘Natural laws’ are historical, are transitory, like all
+others. All men know how, in certain times, and places, religious
+tolerance, freedom of trade, private property, constitutional monarchy,
+have been proclaimed eternal, and in other times and places the
+extirpation of unbelievers, commercial protection, communism, the
+republic and anarchy.”[9]
+
+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 law. Nothing can be farther from truth. His contention was
+that laws being manifestations of man’s will must change with the
+changes in facts. The ideas of the eighteenth or nineteenth century
+can no longer be a living reality. The reality which he denies to the
+law itself he recognises as belonging to the single act done under the
+law, that is to say to the execution of the law. The indubitable truth,
+as to the necessity of acting in each case according to historical
+necessities, has induced people at different times and in different
+places, to proclaim the sheer uselessness of law. Benedetto Croce is
+most definitely against such theories. According to him, the best
+arguments to be used against them can be drawn from history itself, 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 times. The necessity of laws, ordinances, justice, and the
+state, appears at all points of human history. Better a bad government
+than no government at all; and those who declaim against laws can well
+do so at their ease, for the law surrounds, protects, and preserves
+their life for them.
+
+
+
+
+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 minds. Croce
+always starts from a distinct problem, from a particular question,
+and rises to speculative heights partly through the vigour of his own
+genius and partly through his constant intercourse with Gentile, to
+whom any particular problem always presents itself from the outset
+_sub quadam specie Æternitatis_. On the other hand, Gentile starting
+thus, 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 Aquinas, by his vast
+erudition not only in the history of philosophy, but in the whole
+historical world. Yet, even apart from this, and from his special
+interest in all the problems of Law and pedagogy, the influence of
+Benedetto Croce always compels Gentile to keep in touch with actual
+reality. Their mutual criticism is perhaps the best example in
+philosophical history of the creative power of the critic. 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 theory.
+
+The import of Croce’s work is certainly more easily grasped than
+Gentile’s ideas as they present themselves in his theoretical world.
+Many Italians are acting on these ideas of Gentile’s who would be
+unable to formulate them; and that is the most remarkable thing
+about them. He became a professor at the age of twenty-one, exactly
+thirty years ago, 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 writings, but also by the number and
+fervour of the disciples he has attracted. A born teacher, he loves
+teaching, and in teaching has acquired much of his knowledge of mind.
+He never divorces theory from the concrete ground of life; and when
+he addresses people between 17 and 60 years of age he is constantly
+forcing them to test in their own actual life the truth of what he is
+saying.
+
+He strongly dislikes the taking of notes; for he does not want the
+students to repeat his own words on the day of their examination.
+The lectures are only meant to help them to take their bearings,
+to enlighten them; they must read their set books by themselves
+and interpret them by their own wits. His words must be taken as
+an invitation to think out their own problems for themselves; he
+wants to spur them on, not to solve problems for them. Thousands of
+schoolmasters are actually following his pedagogy which so perfectly
+meets the requirements of the present generation, that it is admirably
+acted upon in the remotest villages and by people whose philosophy is
+that of commonsense and good-will. Gentile has produced not only a
+system of philosophy, but determined a current of spiritual life which
+partakes both of theory and practice—blending them perfectly.
+
+Just as Bruno, Bacon and Descartes opened the era of subjectivism,
+individualism and liberty, 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 self, since his
+subjectivism becomes concrete and capable of realising the object. This
+sounds somewhat abstruse and a few illustrations of the point at issue
+may be useful.
+
+Fuel is not fire, and in order to warm myself, fire is the thing I
+need. But the fuel is necessary to the fire. The fire, indeed, _is_
+only so far as it consumes the fuel. Both are necessary; yet it is
+the fire which makes the fuel; since the coal, wood, or charcoal is
+fuel merely because the fire can destroy it as such. But the fire does
+not exist before it starts to consume the fuel. Now in knowledge the
+thing man knows is not knowing, it is known; therefore, the principle
+of knowledge is man. But can man know, in the absence of that which
+he knows? Obviously not. Shall we then go back to the old dualism and
+take man and the world, the subject and the object, as standing in
+opposition again? No; 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 it. The one single source of _spiritual_ reality is
+man; but he realises the world only in so far as he realises himself as
+a knowing subject. And just as fire is fire as long as it destroys the
+fuel; so man is really man, a spiritual being, a subject as long as he
+acts as such. The point is often explained by practical illustration to
+quite tiny children, to whom no one would try to state it, as I have
+just done, theoretically.
+
+  Master: Why do you come to school?
+
+  Pupil: Because my mother sent me (—or—to learn to read and write.)
+
+  Master: If you come because your mother sent you, that is quite
+  right; but until you see for yourself why you should come to
+  school, you will get very little good out of it.
+
+  Pupil: But since I have got to come, I want to learn.
+
+  Master: And what do you suppose all the others come for?
+
+  Pupil: Why, sir, to learn.
+
+  Master: And tell me, what must I do if you are all to learn?
+
+  Pupil: I suppose you must teach us.
+
+  Master: Well now, what is a school?
+
+  Pupil: This is a school.
+
+  Master: You mean the building?
+
+  Pupil: Yes, of course.
+
+  Master: Don’t you think I could teach and you could learn in a
+  field?
+
+  Pupil: Well, I suppose we could.
+
+  Master: Would that be a school? (No answer). It would. You see the
+  building and the writing over the door have nothing to do with it.
+  _We_ make the school. For if to-morrow the authorities were to send
+  us to a barn and put some poor people here——
+
+  Pupil (interrupting): Sir, I know, it would be a poorhouse.
+
+  Master: And the barn where we went?
+
+  Pupil: It would be the school.
+
+  Master: Right. Then who makes the school?
+
+  Pupil: The teacher and the pupils.
+
+  Master: Right. But let us go on talking about the same case. The
+  authorities say that this place must be given up to house poor old
+  people. Now I think that a lot of strong boys like you could carry
+  the benches, blackboard and so on to the barn.
+
+  Pupil: Of course we could.
+
+  Master: And I might say to you: “Come this afternoon, all of you,
+  and let us do it.”
+
+  Pupil: Very well, we would come, at least those who live near.
+
+  Master: And we would start teacher and pupils together, carrying
+  the things.
+
+  Pupil: Yes, sir.
+
+  Master: Would that be a school?
+
+  Pupil: Of course not, sir.
+
+  Master: Then it is not enough to have pupils and teacher together
+  to make a school.
+
+  Pupil: No, sir.
+
+  Master: What is missing, then?
+
+  Pupil: Why, sir, we carry benches and things, and that is not a
+  school.
+
+  Master: Well, what exactly is a school?
+
+  Pupil: ... I don’t know.
+
+  Master: I’ll tell you. It is my teaching and your learning that
+  makes a school. Do you see?
+
+  Pupil: Oh, yes.
+
+  Master: But if it is actual teaching and learning that make a
+  school, what happens if the master is a bad master and does not
+  actually teach anything?
+
+  Pupil: Well ... I suppose it is not a real school ...
+
+  Master: It is not a school at all.
+
+  Pupil: I see.
+
+  Master: Now if a boy does not want to learn at all——
+
+  Pupil: He is a bad pupil.
+
+  Master: He is not a pupil at all, as long as he persists in not
+  learning.
+
+  Pupil: Of course he is not.
+
+  Master: And if he makes a noise and prevents the others from
+  learning, what then?
+
+  Pupil: He oughtn’t, sir.
+
+  Master: I know he oughtn’t. But if he does not see that he
+  oughtn’t, and goes on doing it, what happens?
+
+  Pupil: He prevents the others from learning and the master from
+  teaching.
+
+  Master: Very good, and what is the result for the school, if, as
+  you see, it is the actual teaching and learning which makes the
+  school?
+
+  Pupil: It is just as before, when the Master was bad, it stops
+  being a school.
+
+  Master: Now supposing you didn’t mind being punished rather than
+  keep still, could you start singing or jumping about just to be
+  funny?
+
+  Pupil: Well, no, not even if I did not mind being sent out, I
+  couldn’t.
+
+  Master: Do you know why?
+
+  Pupil: Because I should spoil your teaching and their learning.
+
+  Master: And you would destroy the school.
+
+In such a discussion, which may occupy several days or weeks, the child
+has obviously learnt some rules of life derived from highly speculative
+notions. The reality of any relation depends on two acts directed
+towards a common aim; therefore, the rights of the two parties are
+dependent upon their actual efficiency in the pursuit of the common
+aim. A master who does not teach must be dismissed; a pupil who does
+not learn loses the right of being a pupil. Similarly, if a landowner
+allows the ground to lie waste, he is not discharging his duties as a
+landowner and his rights to his property are not actual. This stands
+in complete contrast with the “Rights of Man” which could assert man’s
+liberty to use his property as he chose, the state only calling upon
+its citizens to pay taxes—and fight in war, because the state was
+understood as something external to the citizens. The relation between
+employer and employed is clearly parallel to that between master and
+pupil; in it the common aim is to realise as much profit as possible
+out of the enterprise. As soon as one of the parties diminishes the
+productivity of the enterprise, he forfeits his right to damage
+himself, the other party and the commonwealth. The state, though having
+no direct shares in the profit is enriched or impoverished according to
+the increased or decreased productivity of private enterprises.
+
+In this is stated for the first time since Christ preached and lived
+the Gospel, the true equality of men that had been asserted in it. So
+thoroughly does Christianity realise that rights are correlative to
+duties, that before spiritual citizenship can be bestowed on a child
+in most Christian churches sponsors are required to take a pledge in
+its name, and upon its coming to adult state the young Christian must
+confirm that pledge and acknowledge the duties on which its rights
+depend.[10] This is the reason why the Roman Catholic Church is at once
+democratic and hierarchical. A shepherd can become Pope, an Emperor
+can be deprived of his spiritual citizenship. The view of citizenship
+as a birthright is a relic of Paganism when slavery might be the
+predestined fate of some and citizenship of others. Political reality
+finally becomes spiritual reality; man is a citizen exactly in so far
+as he realises the state, through the act of consciousness by which,
+transcending the empirical element in his own will, he postulates such
+a will in religious objectivity, thereby making it law.
+
+The little boy, in realising that his purpose in going to school is
+to learn, transcends everything in his will that is merely individual
+or private. His will ceases to be subjective, it becomes greater than
+the little boy, it becomes school life, it becomes objective and
+transcending the little boy, it is to him _Law_ in all the majesty and
+imperativeness of the term. Again, boys become members of a football
+team because they want to play and eventually win matches. They want
+this freely and this choice, together with their individual skill in
+the game, produces the team as a unit for the purposes of play. But
+the team once formed, the captain chosen for his fitness to command
+the team in such a way as to increase its efficiency, and each member
+called to perform the part in which he can best serve the team’s
+interest, the act of will by which each member in perfect liberty wants
+to win a match transcends itself, become the team’s will, and as such,
+objective, sacred, inviolable law. The instances in which members of a
+team, disregarding the orders of the captain (in whom the eleven wills
+in all their liberty fuse into one and become law), play to show off
+their personal skill illustrate clearly enough by their effect on the
+score, the inviolableness of such collective will.
+
+To realise the full force of this relation between liberty and law, the
+state and the citizen, is not easy, if one looks for it exclusively
+in Gentile’s philosophy of law; but his pedagogy makes it far easier
+and his lectures perfectly easy. There is something religious about it
+which pervades the whole of his philosophy as it pervades Fascism.
+
+The child is brought to realise what he is by looking at the various
+societies which co-operate in making him what he is. Being asked what
+he would say, If somebody meeting him in America asked him what he
+was and who he was, what would he say? He usually answers to such a
+question that he would say: “I am so-and-so,” but he is then asked:
+“What does that mean?” which brings the child to realise that the
+meaning of his name is that he is the son of his father and mother,
+he is what he is first of all as belonging to his particular family.
+Again: “I am so-and-so” conveys but little to a perfect stranger. What
+would he say next. “I am an Italian.” Very well, and “what kind of
+man in Italy?”... The child here usually pauses in great perplexity.
+It takes some time before he comes to speak of a possible profession
+and of his religion; and for this last point it is necessary to point
+out to him that there are several religions. Once he has got there,
+however, 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 ideas. The author
+has had the opportunity of noting how easily children grasped the true
+nature of their relation to family, country, religion, and school, and
+the fact that what they were depended on their consciousness of being
+a living member of such societies. The child thus acquires a religious
+attitude towards them. He realises the sacred character of the family,
+as based solely upon his own moral realisation of his relation to the
+members of his family. The family blood running in his veins, he is
+told has nothing to do with that relation. His father is his father in
+the spiritual way which alone binds them together, because he calls
+him his son and acknowledges paternal relationship to him with all the
+duties and claims that it involves. 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-self; and that such societies are merely the various consciousness
+of single members transcending their poor, limited, empirical
+little selves and calling into existence their better and greater,
+transcendental selves. Man as a thing-in-itself is nowhere to be found;
+mankind vanishes like a phantom as soon as you try to meet it. If every
+man and boy in the world discharged his duty as a member of a family,
+of a school, of a club, of a calling, and finally of a church and of a
+state, mankind would certainly know peace and well-being, for man then
+would consider his relations, school, club and trade fellows, religious
+brethren and fellow citizens as belonging to his own self. But no man
+can do so perfectly, and it is as much as can be expected from him if
+he does what, in the sincerity of his soul, 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 self. The speculative ground of such a
+conception of life must be briefly stated before coming to the idea of
+Liberty and Law, and to that of citizen and state.
+
+Spiritual reality is not Mind plus some spiritual fact; it is purely
+and simply Mind as subject, since any spiritual fact must be resolved
+in the real activity of the subject, who knows it. Common language
+expresses this by saying that to know something thoroughly we must
+make it our own. Strictly speaking we know no others. If we know them
+and speak of them they must be within us. To know is to identify, to
+overcome otherness as such. As long as we feel ourselves confronted
+by the spiritual existence of others as different from ourselves,
+something from which we must distinguish ourselves, something which we
+presuppose as having been in existence before our birth, it is merely a
+sign that we are not yet realising the spirituality of their existence.
+To us they are still nature.
+
+This doctrine would be absurd if it were not considered in the light
+of Gentile’s notion of the transcendental and empirical selves, both
+meeting in man, as a concrete person in whom the infinity of the
+transcendental individualises itself through the finiteness of the
+empirical. The transcendental ego being one and the empirical egos
+being multiplicity itself, it is obvious that the _differences_ are
+as necessary to the identity as the fuel to the fire. It is, indeed,
+through the process of transcending empirical differences that man
+asserts the transcendental character of mind.
+
+Obviously all the difficulties of moral problems arise from an
+empirical conception of man and his relations to others. Empirically I
+am an individual, and as such in opposition not only to all material
+things, but equally to all the individuals to whom I assign a spiritual
+value, since all objects of experience, whatever their value, are not
+only distinct but separate from one another in such a way that each, by
+its own particularity absolutely excludes from itself all the rest. All
+moral problems arise from experience and arise precisely because of
+the absolute opposition in which the ego, empirically conceived, 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 world. This means that moral problems arise in so
+far as we become aware of the unreality of our being, as an empirical
+ego, opposed to other persons and surrounding things, and in so far as
+we come to see that our own life is actualised in the things opposed
+to it. But though this is the situation in which moral problems arise,
+they are solved only when man comes to feel another’s needs as his own,
+and thereby finds that his own life means that he is not closed within
+the narrow circle of his empirical personality, but is ever expanding
+in the activity of a mind superior to all particular interests and
+yet immanent in the very core of his personality. It must never be
+forgotten, however, that the reality of the transcendental ego, far
+from destroying the empirical ego, implies it.
+
+Passing to the essential characteristics of what might be opposed
+as spiritual to what is natural, we find Gentile working out the
+distinction from the fact that anything natural, such as a stone,
+_is_ whilst anything spiritual, mind, a work of mind, a political
+constitution _becomes_. Mind and being are opposite terms. A plant
+_is_, an animal _is_, in so far as all the determinations of the plant
+or animal are a necessary and _pre-ordained consequence_ of its nature.
+All the manifestations by which their nature is expressed are already
+there, existing implicitly. The empirical manifestations of their
+being come to be conceived, therefore, as closed within limits already
+prescribed as impassable boundaries. In the natural world everything
+is pre-ordained according to the law of Nature, or, to use Gentile’s
+own words, everything _is by Nature_. In the spiritual world nothing
+_is by Nature_, but it becomes what it becomes through the activity
+of mind. Nothing is ever ready-made; nothing can be finished and
+complete. The social position of a family, the political system of a
+country can never be settled once for all; the members of the former
+and the citizens of the latter must go on creating it day by day and
+hour by hour. So is it with moral life. All the noblest achievements
+of the past do not diminish one whit the sum of duties still to be
+performed. The minute man stops realising in the inmost recesses of
+his consciousness what he must do for his family, for his country, or
+even for the firm to which he belongs, the family will be decadent,
+the country will begin to lose what his predecessors had painfully
+won, the firm will feel the incipient decay of a credit acquired
+through work and sacrifice. Nothing is ever done once for all; morally,
+intellectually, politically, socially, economically, everything is
+always to be done.
+
+A hard gospel to preach when man is accustomed as he is now to hear
+only the proclamation of his rights. Sacrifice, self-denial is here
+pointed out as the way to greater conquests and to the assertion of
+a nobler and more powerful self. To find spiritual reality man must
+seek it and, seeking it, create it. This means that it never confronts
+him as an external reality. If man wants to find it he must work to
+realise it. So long as it is sought it is found, so long as it is being
+conquered or constructed it is to be found, so long but no longer.
+Empires show signs of incipient decay the moment the Empire builders
+stop building them, stop wanting to build them. Yet from this austere
+conception of life springs a beautiful notion of liberty, a splendid
+conception of man’s creativity.
+
+Gentile has had the courage to study closely, very closely, the old
+scholastic Doctors, thereby acquiring a deep and almost unerring sense
+of Christianity; whilst his familiarity with the problems of law and
+the works of the Humanists and the Renaissance, have marked him with
+characteristics that sometimes cause his hearers to hail in him a
+Father of the Church. All this notwithstanding there are many points of
+doctrine upon which he stands in contrast with the theologians.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Where Gentile speaks of thinking he invariably refers both to the
+act of the will and to the act of the intellect; 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
+rejected. The mind is not now intellect and now will; but is known now
+as intellect and now as will. It should be observed, however, that
+the creative will does not create a world that issues from it and
+exists independently of it; it is self-creative just as any judgment
+is first of all self-assertive. No act of man’s will is ever directed
+to something already realised; man always wants to do an action. For
+instance, wanting a new pair of shoes merely means wanting to buy, to
+have, to get, a new pair of shoes; and since we have seen that any
+action is self-assertion, man in any act of will is wanting to realise
+his own self. In consequence of the unity existing between him and the
+world, man’s purpose is never external to him. Man realising his own
+self: such is the nature of mind, dynamic and dialectic at once.
+
+This notion of dialectic enables us to meet law and liberty on their
+common ground, morality; spiritual reality is endowed with a life that
+is best called dialectic, inasmuch as it is never either completely
+positive or purely negative. Anything spiritual from the most intimate
+religious experience, down to any political form, family arrangement,
+or business establishment _is_ so long as, not yet being, it strives
+to realise, to assert, to establish itself. Anything spiritual let
+us say, human, the moment it _is_, that is to say the moment it is
+accomplished, the moment it ceases to develop or establish itself, is
+dead or dying. Gentile uses even stronger language: he says outright,
+_as a reality it is absolutely_ annihilated.
+
+For him, as for Kant, the law of man’s will is the end that determines
+each act of will; since to be moral the will must have in itself
+its own law and its own end. The word moral can here have but one
+equivalent, namely, spiritual, that is to say _possessing value_.
+Morality so understood is an attribute of the entire life of mind,
+which must have an absolute value—be it truth, beauty, or goodness—such
+value being meaningless if it does not correspond to an ought to be,
+imperative _hic et nunc_ as a consequence of liberty. Moreover, this
+binding imperativeness is universal—for imperative means necessary, and
+there can be no necessity without universality.
+
+The good is, in conclusion, the value of man’s spirit in its
+dialectical actuality; it may be termed the most concrete form of
+spiritual reality. Any spiritual act is moral in so far as it is mind’s
+realisation; consequently the negation of morality cannot be understood
+without understanding this realisation, which is the spiritual process
+or development of mind as society. The good is development; and as
+such it implies evil as its negativity.[11] Light and shadow, good
+and evil; in both cases the second term is the negative of the first.
+And herein lies all the tragedy of mind. Spiritual life is a complex
+of light and shadow, a constant struggle of the particular with the
+universal. Negativity opposes itself to positivity, evil to good, as
+the _particular_ to the universal. Yet it is through their conflict and
+opposition that spiritual life realises itself, and this realisation is
+entrusted to the individual, who in and through his very particularity
+is the agent of the universal will.
+
+Obviously, if we take man, the individual man, in his pure
+empiricalness, he can do nothing without superhuman help. But this
+notion of man, which is the ground of all the abstract forms of
+egoism, individualism and anarchy, is a mere fancy. No single man can
+so be deprived of the divine light of intelligence as not to know
+of his own existence as a person, as a self, and in the very act
+of knowing himself as such to assert what is universal in him. Man
+in short is universal in so far as he does not belong to nature, a
+pure object of knowledge, but is a subject. So that his moral law is
+nothing superadded to him _ab extra_, it is the life granted to him by
+Providence realising itself.
+
+This is a far cry from ordinary selfishness. 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 body.
+Man’s body is in fact one among many. But man’s will in his opposition
+to other wills reveals his universality. 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 will. Men’s wills collide with each other,
+it is true, but they do so in the very attempt to enforce the claims
+of that in them which is universal. For will has not realised itself
+as long as it stands as one will face to face with another will or so
+many other wills. In such a position it appears as one among many, as
+accidental and particular, as having a law differing from that of the
+others; whereas it always claims to be Will, 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 will.
+
+The statement of this problem, the moral problem, is very difficult
+indeed, and from a misrepresentation of the relations between _my_
+will and _your_ will and _his_ will, arise conflict and war; but our
+conception of war is not complete if we consider it apart from the
+conception of peace. War is nothing but the realisation of peace, which
+is the reconciliation of a duality or plurality of wills in the Will.
+This is why war exists and why there are private interests conflicting
+in the plurality of wills. Such war and conflict, however, are due
+to the particularity of the wills and last as long as each of these
+wills insists on realising itself as universal, ceasing when they
+compose their differences and accept as the common will that which
+has manifested its universality through the conflict. A peace without
+war cannot be conceived, 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 being. Thus will
+is, and ever must be, _concordia discors_.
+
+Whatever the social unit taken as an example—family, school, state,
+church—the reality of it is always in development and is intelligible
+only as a process. It never _is_, and always is, but only in so far
+as it realises itself in perfect liberty. This free realisation does
+not permit of the separation of its negativity from its positivity.
+In such a way, though realising itself as universal, 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 universalisation. A society that perfectly unifies its
+spiritual diversity, abolishing every sign of variety, has inevitably
+gone to pieces since it loses all the spiritual forces that made it
+alive. Gentile goes so far as to say that in fact it is already dead.
+It is the eternally recurring opposition of interests and wills that
+permits the dialectic and dynamic unity of life to pulsate in any
+social constitution. Consequently the particularity of the will—to be
+resolved in the universal—consists in its negativity, without which the
+assertion of the universal could not exist as an act, for it would be a
+mere fact, not something due to the act of man but just something which
+_is_ by nature.
+
+There is no assertion of will which is not exclusion, suppression
+of its own negation. Thus society is empirically the agreement of
+individuals, and speculatively the realisation of will through an
+eternal process. Universal value is thereby identified as a process
+realising itself through the suppression of what is particular and
+negative. Society is not _inter homines_, but _in interiore homine_ and
+it can exist between men inasmuch as all men are spiritually one man,
+with one single interest: the eternal _increment_ of the patrimony of
+mankind.
+
+Now _society_ implies _authority_, a superior will imposed on the
+associated wills to unite them under a common law. Rousseau had
+conceived the state, the people as a passive body, reserving activity
+for the sovereign. Gentile having raised to speculative form the
+brilliant intuition that lies in the Contract, after having fully
+recognised it as Rousseau’s idea, now rejects his conception of the
+distinction between sovereign and subjects. What he actually denies is
+the passivity ascribed to the people, and the school is, as usual, the
+experimental ground of his notion.
+
+School is a form of spiritual association implying a teacher, lawgiver
+to his pupils. It is not the teacher, however that, through his
+authority, brings the pupils to accept truth; on the contrary it is
+truth that confers authority on the teacher. The _Ipse dixit_ implies
+a great knowledge of the master’s familiarity with science. Whatever
+the ground on which we acknowledge an authority, the authority is such
+as a consequence of our _acknowledging_ it; and all the theories and
+inquiries concerning the source of a higher authority are to Gentile
+vain prattling. For him it is quite obvious that, 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 it. Through this agency and
+this agency alone authority _becomes_ law.
+
+Authority is invested in the spiritual self, the universal person,
+ultimately the only sovereign. This transcendental self is the
+transcendental law of which we have spoken as moral law, 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 acknowledged.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is now easy to realise that, although Gentile was first known as
+a Hegelian, 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 Aquinas, Kant and above all to Vico. 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 reality.
+
+In spite of his brilliant conception of dialectic Hegel’s intuition
+of Reality is not dialectical but intellectualistic, and therefore
+static. He realised that we do not conceive reality dialectically
+unless we conceive it as itself thought. But he distinguished the
+intellect which conceives things from the reason which conceives mind
+and his dialectic was in consequence a dialectic of thought, thought
+however being understood as the result of the act of thinking. Whereas
+to have a real dialectic, corresponding to the throbbing reality of
+life, what is wanted is a dialectic of thought, understood as the act
+of thinking. What has already been thought is as static as a stone.
+Hence the necessity in which Hegel found himself of separating thought
+and action, which led him to declare in the introduction to his
+philosophy of Right that Philosophy was a twilight bird, whose activity
+began at dusk when the day’s work was done. For Hegel a law in order
+to be imperative must be pronounced by something that is already in
+existence. But Reality in existence is nature. Hegel’s state belonging
+thus to static reality, being a fact, not an act, the citizen is
+nothing in himself; all his reality come to him from the state. This
+does not mean that he is annihilated (both in Imperialism and Communism
+he is very highly cultivated), but is as the little wheel of a huge
+engine which is carefully oiled so that the machine may go the better
+for it. His end is the state’s end.
+
+Not so with Gentile. Reality, being really dialectical does not admit
+of a distinction between will and intellect. You do not act and then
+think about it. For life, natural or spiritual, is the reality: if
+theory, the activity of the intellect, is merely a contemplation of
+it, such theory is not even real. How can one think of something added
+to the real world? What could such an addition be? There is no way of
+conceiving knowledge except as a creation of the spiritual reality
+which is itself knowledge. If Reality is spiritual, in realising
+itself it creates both the will and the intellect. It is only through
+the empirical consideration of their manifestations that they can be
+distinguished; speculatively they are one and the same thing.
+
+The difference between the idea of a good action and a good action
+itself is a difference between two ideas. In the first case we mean the
+idea which is a content or abstract result of thought, but not the act
+by which we think it, and in which its concrete reality truly lies. And
+in the second we mean the idea, not as an object or content of thought,
+but as the act which realises a spiritual reality.
+
+The state can not be a fact, something already realised. It is the
+eternal process, the _instauratio regnum boni_ always becoming, and
+dying to be realised by the consciousness of the individual in its own
+process of self-realisation. The state is indeed the moral reality of
+the individual, who to become a citizen realises himself transcending
+his empirical subjectivity. The state exists only in the hearts of
+men; it is the intellectual and practical activity of men realising
+themselves as spiritual reality. It is always being altered through
+the positive and negative manifestation of man’s moral will. Man is
+not and cannot be subject to the state, except in so far and in so far
+only as he is its creator. And creation means liberty no less than
+self-realisation means realisation of the not-self and therefore the
+law.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+BENITO MUSSOLINI
+
+
+Now that we have traced both the political and philosophical
+antecedents of what is here called Fascism, since it expresses itself
+as such, but might perhaps as well be termed the political and
+philosophical coming of age of Italy as a great nation, we must turn
+to the man, whose lot it has been to embody such historical forces and
+bring them to actual realisation.
+
+It may seem rather rash to compare Benito Mussolini with Dante and
+some people may think it a profanation. Poetry and politics put on the
+same level; a man considered by many little better than an adventurer
+(and appearing as such in the biography written by a friend of his,
+Miss M. Sarfatti); the new constitution far from being complete and,
+Fascist legislation comprising with a very few great laws, a sequence
+of decrees suggestive of tyranny! Such a comparison must seem to some
+absurd, although it is a fact that just as Dante embodied in the Divina
+Commedia all the philosophy, all the arts and politics of mediæval
+Italy, Mussolini is now embodying in the new régime all that is great
+and good in modern Italy.
+
+It may be held, in fact, that political deeds do express the life of
+minds just as forcibly as poetry, therefore that they do not stand in a
+position of æsthetic inferiority to the compositions of poets, unless
+one chooses to compare the politics of a decadent period to the poetry
+of a great period. It may also be held that “adventurer” is an epithet
+that befits better the Duce of Miss Sarfatti than the Uomo Novo of
+Antonio Beltramelli, in whose book the same Duce appears as the herald
+of an entirely new period of the life of Italy. And the present book
+is concerned exclusively with what may prove of lasting value in the
+laws of the government of Mussolini, and does not imply an approval
+of what may be objectionable in the actual methods of government; it
+takes the view that tyrannical decrees and the like are inherent in
+the revolutionary stage of the régime and temporary measures bound to
+disappear when that stage has been outgrown. Our sensible souls may
+be shocked when we feel the violence of the hatred with which Dante
+pursues his enemies right into Hell or Purgatory. Mussolini’s soul is
+just as sensible and modern as our own. Not only would he forbear from
+hating his dead adversaries, but he does not hate his enemies even
+during their life. He can speak of them with the greatest serenity and
+recall the time when they were his friends without losing his sense of
+fair appreciation. 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 Providence.
+
+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 work. Such facts are as mysterious as the nature of genius. 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 mind; 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 action.
+
+Through the political realisation of what was potentially included
+in their political theories France and England have shared, as we
+have seen, the honour of being the champions of Liberalism and
+Radical Democracy, just as through the political elaboration of the
+theories of Kant, Fichte and Hegel, Germany has developed Imperialism
+and Communism. Now that such political institutions and systems of
+philosophy have given all that could be had out of them, Italy comes
+forward and opposes, to what her thinkers consider as being henceforth
+at best abstract subjectivism, another subjectivism which—being freed
+from the materialism, mechanism and naturalism, that persisted in
+thought and life of former generations, 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 Mind, and more specially with the activity of
+Mind. The individual, the subject to assert itself in the activity of
+mind must have an object. Self implies Not-self. Therefore, liberty
+implies law. The citizen implies the state. The employer, or the
+employed, implies the enterprise for the productivity of which one
+employs and the other is employed.
+
+In short, after the objectivism of the late Middle Ages and
+Renaissance, after the subjectivism of the modern world, Fascism is the
+synthesis of both in politics, just as well as in philosophy, since,
+after the “everything through the force of privilege” of the former
+and the “everything through the force of numbers” of the latter, it
+comes and says “everything for everyone that shall deserve it through
+moral sacrifice and productive activity.” It tries to bring forward
+the Christian equality of men since it meets everyone on the basis of
+actual value. 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 neighbour, and his neighbour as himself.
+
+Mussolini, to whom we must always turn as the living expression of
+Fascism, 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 self. 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 men; it hopes that they may realise how
+intimately it is related to every citizen, 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 objectivity.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mussolini, when he was still in his teens, used to sit up late in the
+inn kept by his father in Forli, and according to a man who used
+to meet him there, he was even then wont to distress himself at the
+materialistic form which Socialism had taken in Italy. Day after day
+he would make the same objection, “It is all right,” he would say,
+“to better the economic conditions of the people, and you do better
+them. But I cannot help realising that they are losing more and more
+the spiritual life which was for them religion and tradition, without
+taking anything of the higher and nobler side of Socialism.” He had
+read Andrea Costa’s writings and was devouring the international
+classics of Socialism, besides his Mazzini, so often quoted by his own
+father and the Republicans of Forli, who had never read a page of the
+great idealist. The thought that people were getting more and more
+indifferent to everything but food or rest, was a nightmare to him.
+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 religion. This may be noted in the articles he wrote as the
+editor of _La Lotta di classe_ during the years 1910–1911. He is an
+orthodox Socialist, 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 English, a French, or a German Socialist
+leader of the same period. Here and there, however, a single sentence
+attracts the careful Italian reader, or the foreigner familiar with
+all the shades of the language. A personal accent is felt; there is
+an original idea in an original wording; and it is either a request
+that the party leaders should be experts and the members qualified
+artisans; or an appeal highly spiritual, and in a way deeply religious.
+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 Socialism. “For this
+people,” he would say, “above all the women, _have no conception of
+life_ at all, since we have deprived them of religion.”
+
+It would be, therefore, a profound mistake to see in Mussolini’s
+attitude towards the Church, and in the action of his government to
+reinstate religion all through life, a political move, intended to
+secure the support of the clergy. Religion is not a useful string on
+which he plays as the great artist he is, either to secure the support
+of the Catholics and their clergy, or to keep people quiet and insure
+their moral education. What he realised between 1900 and 1912, through
+an intuition of genius, is that the people had no general notion
+whatever, no concept of what is life, never even realised that they
+could ask themselves such a question as: What is life, what is the
+world? and that religion was necessary to them.
+
+Mussolini firmly believes in the necessity of arousing strong religious
+conviction in the people of every class. He does so on ground
+provided to him by the example of his mother, by the result of his
+own observation and experience as a leader, and last, but not least
+by his reading of de Sanctis’s principal work. That great critic is,
+indeed, the one link between Vico, Croce, Gentile and Mussolini, whose
+genius was to create the political system in which their ideas receive
+practical realisation.
+
+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 formulated, 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 generations,
+whilst they act all along in keeping with the spiritual atmosphere
+which that intellectual movement has developed and the ideas it has
+put in circulation. The reason of this lies in the æsthetic genius
+of Mussolini. Like the greatest artists produced by Italy, he is at
+once macrocosm and microcosm. The whole of Italy’s past, as in another
+Dante, converges in him. His avid personality takes it all in, 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 it.
+
+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 word. He never uses philosophical terms to express
+it; yet so highly speculative is the notion that Giovanni Gentile is
+probably the only philosopher to have worked it out, and whosoever
+did not believe in Providence could be convinced that Providence
+exists just by studying Croce, Gentile, and the way their work attains
+realisation at the hands of Mussolini without any previous arrangement.
+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 value, that man’s individual will is not by a long
+way the supreme law, that man’s individual circumstances are not in
+themselves by a long way constitutive of _Life_. All these aims he
+hopes to reach through religion.
+
+When he was a Socialist Leader he was struck by the immorality of women
+and by the cowardice of men. These would lay traps in which other
+people might lose their lives, as when they unscrewed the rails of
+the railway in the province of Forli, but they would not risk their
+own lives. Being at that time, a most orthodox Socialist he could
+not think: “let us stop this demoralising propaganda.” He believed
+that it would be all right in the end, when the end, with a capital
+E, should have come for this capitalist society based as it was on
+selfishness. He wanted a religion, and having then a mentality quite
+anti-historical, he really believed that he could give them a new
+religion if he could but find it. For this would make them realise,
+so he thought, that they did not count in themselves but only through
+their relations to others; and that to realise their better self, they
+must always look at the whole, which is nothing so long as single
+men are not conscious of belonging to it, 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 right. Obviously, this is man
+transcending his own self to assert it through the very negation of its
+empirical nature.
+
+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 here, in this intuitive mind of quite a young
+man, who knew nothing of Gentilian theories, working its way towards
+practical realisation. 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 evidence. From what has
+been said above, 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 collectivity. He had at first
+not made out the import and the consequences of such a view. But the
+necessity of pleading his own cause, when he was tried in 1911 by the
+Tribunal of Forli, for having ordered a strike of protest against the
+Tripoli war, put on his lips a declaration that must be taken into
+consideration whenever Mussolini’s “Imperialism” is in question. In
+the records of the tribunal he is stated to have pleaded his case,
+saying that he did not love his country less than the Nationalists
+did; the difference was between his idea of a country’s greatness
+and theirs. He thought that such greatness depended far more on the
+spiritual and economic level reached by the people of a country, than
+on its territorial extension, the number of its inhabitants, or the
+importance of its colonies. To argue that he has changed his mind on
+this as on other points would not be consistent with facts. Since his
+advent to power the efficiency of the army and navy has been brought to
+a higher standard, but their effective numbers have not been increased
+at all; whilst the greatest care and expense have been dedicated to the
+reform of education, nothing being spared that can promote a deeper
+consciousness of the individual, and an immense scheme is a foot to
+improve the intellectual and spiritual conditions of adults, involving
+huge expense by the government and great personal sacrifice by the
+intellectual and artistic classes.
+
+When Mussolini was in Forli he could not satisfy any of his realistic
+or idealistic exigencies. His intellectual position as a Socialist
+made him long for a paradise to come, a dream at best; his nature,
+like that of many in his province, made him long for actual facts.
+The position proved a difficult one and he was only kept going by the
+strength of his convictions which were most sincere. The man who was on
+his staff in the _Lotta di Classe_ is still a workman and a Socialist;
+and speaks with as much regret for that time as with bitterness for
+Mussolini’s “desertion from the party,” a “desertion” which nothing
+will make him see as a consequence of the very sincerity to which he
+ascribes Mussolini’s power of fascination. 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 and, therefore, false was his position.
+
+The adversaries of the Socialists were continually reproaching them
+for having invented the class struggle. Just because he was absolutely
+sincere Mussolini minded the accusation very much. For if that was
+so the responsibility was indeed a heavy one. He started, therefore,
+looking in history for the origin of that struggle. And it was
+inevitable that his Italian mentality should, through the process of
+his researches, emerge in all its national and personal definiteness;
+that he should reject, more or less consciously, all that is not
+concrete and actual. The Italians usually call “historical” a true
+knowledge or realisation of a given situation of fact, whether past or
+present; again they call “historical” the vision of life as the eternal
+alteration of such situations through a process which knows no regress.
+
+To his relief Mussolini soon found out that the class struggle had
+existed always and everywhere, and that it was due to social and
+financial differences: and this cheered the convinced Socialist in him.
+His next step was to realise that not only had such a struggle existed
+in Rome, in Athens, and elsewhere, but that it was actually the main
+cause of social progress. And with this the Socialist triumphantly
+exulted.
+
+The triumph was a short one, however, and the cause of this exultation
+was to prove a mortal blow to his Socialist faith. If class struggle
+was the main agent of progress and class differences the cause of
+such struggle, there could be no progress, no movement, when class
+differences had been abolished. So painful was the conclusion that he
+must have tried to reject it. When classes should be abolished, every
+thing would be for the best, granted that it could come to be.
+
+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 exist, that perfection cannot exist, 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 arise. Obviously, it is by the inconvenience
+of an actual law that the next law is called into being. Life would
+have, therefore, to be static when the actual state of society would be
+perfect. A question remained and indeed was of moment. Could life be
+static?
+
+The answer could not have waited long for so sharp an observer of life.
+Life is dialectic. The nature of life was manifest to him in the arts.
+De Sanctis had taught him to see that, whilst the very power of his
+own individuality was compelling him to realise that nothing is done
+but by single men acting, acting however as members of the various
+collectivities which determined their personalities. He could no longer
+think of choosing a religion and imposing it on his followers; they
+had one at hand which had been prepared for them by history. Little
+by little the truth came. Men did not act for mankind, they acted
+for their family, for their religion, for their country; they acted
+to better their conditions or to prevent them from getting worse. To
+release Man from his traditions was equivalent to taking the roots of a
+tree from the ground, and condemning it to dry, moulder and rot.
+
+Was, then, Socialism a drug of such a kind that it could only do harm?
+Surely it had done wonders for the wretched lower classes of Italy!
+Then the outbreak of the European War spurred him to take the step
+which had become inevitable. His mind was ready; his genius had reached
+maturity; circumstances would do the rest.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is necessary to realise the man and his Dantesque gift for looking
+at the idea and grasping facts all along, for discharging with personal
+passion a most impersonal task. 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
+action. 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 whole, and to the actual situation of fact.
+Macchiavelli, it must be borne in mind, tried to do with his Tuscan
+militia what Mussolini has achieved, and he only succeeded in realising
+how out of keeping with the times his scheme had been. Sadly, this
+forerunner of Mussolini, not inferior to him in genius or reading, had
+to sit down and write what the regenerator of Italy would have to do,
+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 pen. “Everyone knows,” says Benedetto Croce, who is
+by no means a Fascist, in the _Philosophy of the Practical_, printed
+for the first time in 1908, “that no _vultus instantis tyranni_ can
+extinguish the freedom of the soul; no ruler, be he ever so strong
+and violent, can prevent a rebellion.” If people choose to use the
+word tyrant in the Greek sense of the word they may call Mussolini a
+tyrant, for he is and will be an unconstitutional ruler until the new
+institutions are so framed, that the new régime can function normally.
+But if it is implied by that, as the modern sense of the word allows,
+that he rules against the people’s will it is merely absurd, and one
+single fact could prove the contrary. When two years ago he asked that
+a certain sum should be subscribed in dollars towards the paying to the
+United States War Debt, the issue was many times what he had asked. It
+would not be true to facts to omit that although it was not compulsory,
+there was a good deal of moral pressure made to get the people to
+subscribe. But surely they did not need to cover it so many times and
+the excess was indeed most spontaneously subscribed.
+
+The people of Italy do grumble at many things which are done by the
+Fascists, and anybody would do so. It is mainly, however, individual
+actions which are the object of complaint and not laws or public
+services. 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 power, and
+the country felt the need of being governed in one way or another.
+
+It has been shown in the first part of this book why Italy was not
+governed at all, why no public service could work effectively, why
+foreign policy had to be so inferior to the real position of the
+country, why the beautiful peninsula had fallen into a state bordering
+on anarchy. It is difficult for an Englishman to realise how a country
+could fall into such conditions. England has five or six centuries
+of political experience, 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 legislature. Everybody
+in England is familiar with the process through which political forms
+come into being. People struggle to reach a certain form of government
+and that moment of dialectic ends when the form is reached; they then
+apply it more and more fully and during its application discover its
+limitations; this second movement ends in criticism of the whole
+thing; finally, people set themselves to remedy its shortcomings. This
+last moment coincides in the people with the full consciousness of
+dissatisfaction, and in the leaders with a clear understanding of the
+new tendencies to be satisfied. Thus the people learn to use a new form
+whilst they are using, then discarding, the one that came before it. In
+Italy nothing of the sort happened. The political leaders would have
+been ashamed to be behindhand in what was considered “social progress.”
+
+The immediate aftermath of the war in Italy was as we have seen morally
+a tragedy. It seemed as if something had died, something spiritual.
+Everything seemed to be going to pieces. Nobody seemed to think, nobody
+seemed to realise that moral forces, a national consciousness had been
+produced by the general sacrifice. A few heroes were watching over the
+flame lit up in the young souls who had learned truth in the bitter
+experience of war. They were very few indeed, and they could only get
+a hearing through the actual violence with which they fell on the old
+political classes, who were intent on convincing the people that the
+war had to be forgotten as a nightmare, that man must forget it as
+soon as possible to throw himself again into his pursuit of material
+well-being.
+
+Whatever the smallness of their number—when Mussolini founded the
+first _Fascio_ in 1919 they were 150—they were enough to arouse a deep
+echo in the youth of Italy, which was beginning both for spiritual
+and practical reasons to conceive life as an energy, a force, a
+consciousness transcending the limits set by the interests of the
+individual, bound to upset violently the quiet and selfish life of the
+man intent on the satisfaction of his most empirical desires.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mussolini’s belief was that you could make man realise that, if he
+is the centre of the universe, he is so through his relation to the
+universe, but that you could not do this by words. The only way to
+make men realise that selfishness, when it becomes absolute is bound
+to reduce society to atomistic irrelativeness and thereby to anarchy,
+was, according to him, _action_. If a body of men were ready to do,
+through coherent action and sacrifice of their individual wills, what
+the government ought to have done, then the people would know that
+they could cease from being bullied by the Bolshevist Socialists and
+followers of Don Sturzo, provided they were willing to sacrifice their
+individual wills, as the men of a team of football do when they want
+to win a match. 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 selves. There was, however, no time to organise a religious
+revival; and his knowledge of men provided him with the one intuition
+that could be acted upon at the time. He called on them to defend the
+value of their own sacrifice in the trenches and in the field. Now that
+was not cold and distant as the idea of the nation might have proved;
+it was quite real to them and moved them consequently as nothing
+else could. Through the action of a few hundreds several hundreds of
+thousands were induced to fight for the defence of what had been their
+former action. 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 broken; the breaking up of that tyranny made the people look upon
+the Black Shirts as their liberators. Peasant women and children were
+once more free to go to Church, officers and wounded men were once more
+free to go about in their uniforms without being attacked or insulted,
+workmen were once more free to attend their daily work and earn their
+money as they liked. The Fascists did not have to fight their way to
+power. They merely took it and were cheered on to taking it.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+As soon as Mussolini was in power he was asked by his ministers what
+his programme was. He curtly answered “that it was to realise the full
+value of Italy’s sacrifice in the war.” He had no political programme
+and was so indifferent to party distinctions that he took ministers
+from every party, choosing them only according to their qualification
+as experts. What he required from them was the maximum of efficiency,
+and the maximum also of personal responsibility.
+
+His first great move was the reform of education. For him the greatness
+of a country depended on the consciousness of its citizens. The work
+was naturally entrusted to Giovanni Gentile, who was the greatest
+authority on pedagogy. 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
+Rome. The main features of it are the re-introduction of religious
+and moral, æsthetic and practical education in the schools where
+rational instruction had been paramount for twenty years. This was
+in accord with modern philosophy, reinstating in their lawful places
+along with imagination and intuition, all the activities of Mind
+which had not been duly recognised nor sufficiently developed in the
+last generations. Religion is understood as the one thing capable of
+providing man with a reasonable outlook upon life as a whole, with a
+deep consciousness of his own importance as a factor in the world,
+and with an equally deep consciousness of his nonentity as soon as he
+ceases to be part of a whole, and considers himself apart from his
+relations to his family, to his church, to his school, to his country.
+Æsthetic education is meant to develop the faculty of realising with
+great definiteness. The child must not describe in his small essays of
+ten lines or less something that he cannot draw, and he must not draw
+something different from that which he describes. “Practical” is a very
+bad term for the development of judgment in children yet it is the
+latest word of philosophy which is introduced here.
+
+A good deal of the new education in Italy is done through the teaching
+of history. It may be pointed out, for instance, by the teachers, that
+Russia has had less importance in the development of civilisation than
+England or France, though they are so much smaller. 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 inhabitants. Athens and Persia may be opposed in the same way.
+The child is thus gradually brought to realise the creative power of
+man’s will when it is the “good-will” of the Scriptures. Such will
+is presented to him as the individual will _with a plus_. That is
+to say that the man who realises his duty towards his family, his
+school, country and so on, creates something and thereby is really the
+collaborator of God.
+
+Another side of this education is the highly ideal notion of actual
+reality which is enforced. The child is taught that school is not a
+particular building, but any place where there is a master to teach and
+pupils to learn. The character of such a place is bound to the two acts
+of teaching and learning, therefore, their liberty is a sacred thing.
+He who prevents the master from being heard, the pupils from hearing
+him and learning what he says, destroys such liberty. Ceasing himself
+to listen and to learn, he loses his quality as a pupil, therefore, if
+his schoolfellows kick him out or the master, to protect their liberty
+and their right to learn, sends him away he has nothing to say, for
+he has forfeited his rights by ceasing to learn. He is a pupil in as
+far as he is learning. It is needless to point out that in consequence
+of this a workman is entitled to his rights as such, only so long as
+he is a contributor to the productivity of the enterprise in which he
+is working; that a landowner is the owner of his land as far as he
+discharges his duty as such, which is of making such land produce as
+much as possible for himself, for his tenants and for the country; 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 rights. The
+Gentilian reform with Mussolini’s authority has been able to infuse a
+new life into the teachers of the elementary schools. They have taken
+their work up as an apostolate. Boys and girls know now that manual
+work is as dignified as any, and that it has the merit of being always
+in demand and being more productive than shop and office work. They
+are taught that they must think, when they choose a calling, of their
+old people whom they may have to help and of the family which they are
+going to create. On this particular point the success is wonderful and
+the author has had several opportunities of realising it. In Rome she
+was met by the request of a widow, the mother of four children, to
+recommend her eldest son 15 years old, to a senator to see if he could
+not find him a job as callboy. Objection was made to the choice of the
+job, so badly paid and so tedious, good at most for a weak or less
+clever lad; the recommendation, however, was promised out of respect
+for the mother’s choice. But the morning after the boy appeared, rather
+shy, and full of apologies. He had understood that the choice of the
+job had not been approved. Might he say what he felt about it? Then he
+began to unburden himself. “You know, miss, I cannot stand the notion
+of opening doors, answering bells and carrying trays.... I want to have
+a real calling.... If I am a trained workman I can go all over the
+world, or stay here and marry, helping my mother all along, because I
+can get 35 lire a day and even more. If I am a real workman ...” He
+made up his mind to be a printer and was introduced to a publisher.
+
+Religious and patriotic as it is, education in Italy is, moreover,
+grounded on a deep sense of what are the family duties of man, and on
+a few sound ideas of what is economic in every man’s life. Economy
+is by Mussolini transformed into a moral value. In this again we see
+his political genius going to meet Croce’s theories without knowing
+anything about them. For Croce, an action is economic when it is due
+to the will of a well-informed individual, it becomes moral when the
+individual’s act of will is consonant with the will of the whole. The
+most typical example is that known under the name of _Campagna del
+Grano_, which is meant to induce the landowner and his tenants to use
+the most scientific means of increasing the production of the soil,
+in order that the country should be either freed from the enormous
+expenditure of wheat importation or have it balanced by the silk,
+wine, fruit and oil which should be exported in greater quantities.
+Travelling teachers go from village to village and are met willingly by
+the peasants whom they address in the most homely way. First technical
+suggestions are made with statistics of results obtained in the nearest
+fields of experiment. Then they are discussed with the men. Finally,
+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 increased, but
+that they must above all, remember that they will discharge the first
+of their civic duty; their productive activity is as constructive as
+that of the great scientist and as noble as their own life in the
+trenches during the war. You must no longer plough, sow, reap for your
+own self, that is to say exclusively for your material self, but for
+the state, which is that same empirical self _plus_ its transcendental
+complement. Thereby ploughing, sowing and reaping are no longer the
+work of Man, slave of his material needs, but of Man transcending
+them, without disregarding them, however, and lifting his daily
+occupation to the dignity of a moral realisation of his own economic
+value. The state must, indeed, according to such ideas, be universally
+present as a moral factor in every branch of its citizen’s activity. It
+is, in fact, the all-pervading consciousness that man must have of his
+citizenship which expresses itself as government.
+
+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 it, and many acting
+upon it although they could not have explained it at all. 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
+Syndicates. This has nothing to do with the Fascist Syndicates which
+were until recently opposed to the Socialist trade unions as one
+political organisation to another. The new Syndicates are to be of
+no political colour at all; their action is to be purely economic
+and they are nearly compulsory.[12] Every man must belong to one of
+them either as a labourer, a capitalist or an intellectual, the last
+category containing most professional men. 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 employed. Such delegates are mostly the
+secretaries of the Syndicates and must belong to the calling of
+the men whose interests are entrusted to them; then they must have
+qualified and hold a diploma testifying to their technical and economic
+knowledge of the problems that they may have to treat. The fact that
+they must belong to the trade they exercise and actually exercise it,
+sweeps away all the professional secretaries of trade unions, who,
+living out of their leadership of the workmen, are ready to do anything
+to retain their posts. No less important is the necessity of their
+technical and economical qualification. 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 government. And this is one
+weak point of the organisation_, although it is obviously a temporary
+one.
+
+For the rest it is simply wonderful. The delegates of the two
+syndicates—employed and employers—meet, and they discuss the point
+at issue. Usually they come to an agreement because the greatest
+consideration is taken of the economic facts, local conditions of
+life, supply and demand of work and so on. Failing agreement, the
+syndicates themselves meet and discuss the matter. If the agreement is
+not possible the delegates meet again, but in the presence of a special
+magistrate, who studies the case and whose conclusions are enforced by
+law. No lock-out or strike is even contemplated; they have become an
+offence against the community, and as such liable to various penalties.
+Men are free to produce, but not to destroy.
+
+This brings our study to a conclusion, since to deal with any one point
+of those which have been merely sketched here would require a whole
+volume. The people’s will is free so long as what they wish is for the
+common good and their own good, but it is not free to want anything
+that is either not for the common good or against it. Football is still
+the best example. The men of a team freely want to win the match and
+freely do what they are ordered to do by their captain, but they are
+not free to show off or to spoil the game, to spite the captain or any
+one of the men.
+
+Mussolini makes no mystery about it; his party has come into the
+world as the negation of the Rights of Man as they were formulated
+in the eighteenth century; as the negation of Liberty as it has been
+understood, that is to say abstracting it from its correlative term
+Law; as the negation of democracy as far as democracy is understood,
+through a wrong interpretation of its Greek root taking people as
+equivalent to lower class, is quantity opposed to quality—whereas it is
+equivalent to the nation as a whole; as the negation of the equality of
+1789 which was materially and mechanically conceived.
+
+Yet such negations are the preliminary stage to affirmations—the
+affirmation of the rights of man _arising from his consciousness of
+duty_; of liberty as the positive term of Law, yet as inseparable from
+it as light from shadow; of democracy understood as the impossibility
+of any class willing to rule by force over other classes, be it by
+the force of wealth, arms, or numbers; finally, the equality of men,
+both moral and legal, according to which every man’s rights must be
+proportioned to what he does for the community.
+
+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 it. Whilst in the Anglo-Saxon and French views
+of political reality the State is a function of the citizen; whilst in
+the German view, whether in its Imperialistic or Communistic form, the
+citizen is a function of the state, for modern Italy the state is the
+consciousness of the citizen transcending itself and postulating itself
+in religious objectivity.
+
+No class differences, no financial differences may therefore be
+rendered permanent by the State. No care must be spared that may ensure
+their eternal mutability. Differences are necessary to permit moral,
+social, and economic progress; but their fertility lies in their
+elasticity. If “Avanti” was not the motto of Socialism the Fascists
+could make it theirs; as it is, reintroducing faith and belief at the
+basis of man’s life they seem to point to higher moral, political and
+economical conquests. The only motto that can befit the black shirts
+movement is therefore _Sursum corda_.
+
+
+
+
+[ FOOTNOTES ]
+
+[1] 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 Socialism.
+
+[2] Just as the idea of family in any one individual makes him feel
+that the rest of the people are to him _not his family_, are to him
+objective reality, whilst his people are to him THE FAMILY, and part of
+his subjective reality.
+
+[3] The author has lived in Italy as a student since May, 1913, in
+constant contact with people of all classes.
+
+[4] To refer to one single district and to facts directly known by
+the author, it may be stated that in May, 1920, most of the province
+of Udine having been organised under Don Sturzo’s white banner, the
+peasants had their minds perverted by the very priests to whom they
+had looked hitherto for moral guidance, to the extent of starving
+their own cattle, of ceasing to milk their cows, leaving hundreds of
+beasts howling day and night for a week. (Some of the land-owners,
+above all those who were sportsmen, did their best, at the risk of
+their life, to relieve the poor animals, but could not manage to go
+round the stables every day.) The present writer is a Roman Catholic,
+a friend of peasants wherever she goes and an animal lover; 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-houses, making bullies of country folk she has
+known for thirteen years as excellent people, looking after their
+cattle with so much humanity that they never sit down to a meal before
+their beasts are fed. It is therefore better to state a few facts with
+names and dates. In May, 1920, in San Martino al Tagliamento, Count
+Francesco di Prampero was sequestered in his house with four men of
+the white legion mounting guard on his doors, to compel him to yield
+to the will of the priests and their followers. The same might be said
+of all the land-owners of the villages where Don Sturzism flourished.
+But Count Francesco di Prampero is selected here as being such a friend
+of peasants, that he never lived with his family, since he was in his
+teens preferring the company of his tenants, although he belongs to the
+most ancient aristocracy.
+
+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 not, the _Arditi Bianchi_, who
+were the armed legion of the party, being ready to shoot the obdurate
+men or women. As a matter of fact, the most terrible harm was that of
+the sacraments, in a province as religious as that of Udine, so that it
+is no wonder that Benedict XV, asked by the present writer if he could
+approve such things, was absolutely shocked and let her understand that
+since the war it was his greatest torment.
+
+Space compels to bring this note to a conclusion, and it may be said
+that one of the foremost lieutenants of Don Sturzo, in that Province,
+was Monsignor Gori, a canon of the cathedral of Udine, a man who
+rejoiced over the defeat of his country at Caporetto, befriended the
+invaders, and betrayed two women who had said to him that they were
+praying for the victory of the allies, so that on his denunciation they
+were condemned by the Austrians. This may give a fair idea of what
+was a party that took such a man not only in its ranks, but as a main
+agent, knowing him to be even then, before the advent of Fascism, in
+antagonism with his Archbishop, whose patriotism has since brought upon
+him the underhand persecution of the clergy that had been contaminated
+by Don Sturzism even in its ecclesiastical discipline.
+
+[5] See Francisco de Sancti’s _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_,
+Lateza, Bari, vol. ii, chap. i.
+
+[6] _Philosophy of the Practical._ 1912. Macmillan, London.
+
+[7] Quoted by Wildon Carr’s _The Philosophy of Mind_ of Benedetto Croce.
+
+[8] _Op. cit._
+
+[9] _Op. cit._, page 491.
+
+[10] The same can be said of the Israelite community.
+
+[11] Negativity does not imply unreality.
+
+[12] The way in which they are compulsory is not quite simple; but the
+fact is that when the new institutions are framed men will perhaps get
+their political rights as members of the corporations.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Alberti, Leone Battista, 87
+
+  Alfieri, 168
+
+  Ardigo, 164
+
+  Aretino, 101
+
+  Ariosto, 101
+
+  Aristotle, 65, 66, 67, 94, 107, 108, 172, 216
+
+
+  Bacon, Francis, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 92, 93, 120, 146, 191
+
+  Bacon, Roger, 64
+
+  Bainville, 114, 115
+
+  Bayle, 146, 147
+
+  Beltramelli, 212
+
+  Berkeley, 149
+
+  Bodin, 94
+
+  Boccacio, 81
+
+  Bassuet, 82
+
+  Bismarck, 25, 26
+
+
+  Cairoli, 21, 22
+
+  Campanella, 100, 101, 105
+
+  Carducci, 43
+
+  Carlo, Alberto, 14
+
+  Cavour, 10, 14, 33, 185
+
+  Cherbury, Herbert of, 142
+
+  Corneille, 116
+
+  Cola di Rienzo, 81
+
+  Costa, Andria, 27, 28, 90, 215
+
+  Carradini, 30, 32, 33, 40
+
+  Crispi, 20, 24
+
+  Croce, 88, 89, 125, 130, 170–188, 189, 216, 222
+
+  Cromwell, 96, 99, 100
+
+  Cumberland, 141
+
+  Cuoco, Vincenzo, 122, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 168
+
+
+  Dante, 78, 79, 80, 81, 168, 212, 213
+
+  D’Annunzio, 48, 52
+
+  D’Azeglio Massimo, 11
+
+  Depretis, 25
+
+  De Ruggiero, G., 163
+
+  De Sanctis, 16, 77, 83, 101, 104, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 170,
+        171, 172, 216
+
+  Descartes, 64, 66, 67, 68, 110, 114–124, 126, 146, 191
+
+
+  Ercole, 89
+
+
+  Federzoni, 30, 32, 33, 40
+
+  Ficino Marsilio, 87
+
+  Fiorentino, 164
+
+  Frederick II, 77, 87
+
+  Fichte, 213
+
+
+  Garibaldi, 10, 11, 20, 24, 33
+
+  Gentile, 35, 59, 60, 76, 125, 130, 132, 171, 188–210
+
+  Gioberti, 16, 159, 162, 163, 164, 165, 171
+
+  Ghibellines, 78, 79, 83
+
+  Giolitti, 37, 52
+
+  Grotius, 93, 94, 95, 127
+
+  Guarini, 105
+
+  Guicciardini, 103, 104, 111, 112
+
+  Guelphs, 78, 79, 83
+
+
+  Hegel, 62, 76, 98, 154, 159, 165, 208, 209, 213
+
+  Hobbes, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 109, 111, 122, 127, 129, 146
+
+  Hume, 98, 146
+
+
+  Johnson, 82
+
+
+  Kant, 140, 149, 154, 162, 164, 203, 208
+
+
+  Louis XIV, 114, 115, 116, 124
+
+  Landino, 87
+
+  Lévy Bruhl, 62
+
+  Leibniz, 124, 163
+
+  Locke, 100, 125, 132, 138, 189
+
+
+  Machiavelli, 40, 41, 42, 86, 88, 89, 90, 101, 102, 103, 110, 112,
+        168, 172, 174
+
+  Mâle, 69, 72
+
+  Mazzini, 11, 14, 20, 33, 155, 159, 160, 161, 168, 185, 215
+
+  Malespini, A., 77
+
+  Maritain, 117
+
+  Marx, 62
+
+  Monnier, Ph., 87
+
+  Melzi, 157
+
+  Mill, 164
+
+  Michelangelo, 166
+
+  Minghetti, 24
+
+  Montaigne, 146
+
+  Montesquieu, 147, 149
+
+  Mussolini, 29, 35, 37, 43, 76, 77, 88, 103, 156, 157, 158, 159, 170,
+        171, 177, 180, 186
+
+
+  Nitti, 52
+
+  Newton, 146
+
+
+  Orange, William, 100, 138
+
+
+  Pascal, 146
+
+  Pagano, 155
+
+  Plato, 135
+
+  Plutarch, 133
+
+  Poliziano, 167
+
+  Petrarch, 80, 81, 83
+
+  Piccolomini, 82
+
+  Pisano Nicolo, 76
+
+
+  Rosmini, 16, 159, 162, 164, 171
+
+  Reggio, E., 75
+
+  Rousseau, 107, 126, 128, 138, 145, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155, 207
+
+
+  Salandra, 37, 42
+
+  Saitta, 149
+
+  San Giuliano, 37
+
+  Sarfatti, 212
+
+  Savonarola, 162
+
+  Scholasticism, 63, 64, 108, 111, 119, 128
+
+  Shaftesbury, 141, 142
+
+  Sonnino, 37, 42
+
+  Solmi, 76
+
+  Spaventa, 164, 165
+
+  Spinoza, 89, 129
+
+  Sturzo, and his party, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 225
+
+  St. Anselm, 64
+
+  St. Augustin, 119, 121
+
+  St. Thomas, 64, 94, 108, 129, 208
+
+
+  Tasso, 105
+
+  Toland, 142, 143
+
+  Tocco, 164
+
+
+  Vico, 65, 80, 98, 111, 124–136, 149, 154, 163, 165, 168, 172, 216
+
+  Villari, 163
+
+  Vittorio, Emmanuele, 14
+
+
+  Wildon Carr, 190
+
+
+                  MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
+            THE GARDEN CITY PRESS LIMITED, LETCHWORTH, HERTS
+
+
+                      ~~~ Transcriber’s notes ~~~
+
+No attempt has been made to correct or normalize the spelling of proper
+names or non-English text. The index is in original order. Footnotes
+have been gathered at the end of the text, before the index. The
+included cover is a modified version of the book’s title page and is
+placed in the public domain.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77090 ***
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+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77090 ***</div>
+
+
+<h1>
+THE<br>
+PEDIGREE OF<br>
+FASCISM
+</h1>
+
+<p class="center">
+A POPULAR ESSAY ON THE WESTERN<br>
+PHILOSOPHY OF POLITICS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+BY<br>
+<span style="font-size:x-large;">ALINE LION</span><br>
+<i>Lady Margaret Hall, Oxon.</i><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+LONDON:<br>
+SHEED &amp; WARD<br>
+31, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 4
+</p>
+
+
+<hr>
+<div class="center">
+<div style="display: inline-block;">
+TO<br>
+JOHN WALTER, ESQ.,<br>
+TO WHOSE QUESTIONS I OWE<br>
+THE FIRST IDEA OF THIS BOOK.<br>
+<p class="right">A. L.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style="margin-top:4em;">
+<i>First Published</i>, 1927
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">
+    CONTENTS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc parttop" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Part I</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc partbottom" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">THE POLITICAL ANTECEDENTS OF FASCISM</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td class="tdl smaller">CHAPTER</td>
+    <td class="tdr smaller">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Is Fascism a Revolution?</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Liberalism in Italy</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Nationalism and Socialism</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The European War and its Effects</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc parttop" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Part II</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc partbottom" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">PHILOSOPHICAL ANTECEDENTS OF FASCISM</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Philosophical Antecedents</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Humanism and Renaissance</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Seventeenth Century</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Seventeenth Century in France</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Giambattista Vico</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Illuminism in England and France</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Nineteenth Century in Italy</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Benedetto Croce</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_170">170</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">IX.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Giovanni Gentile</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">X.</td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Benito Mussolini</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Index</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="AUTHORS_NOTE">
+    AUTHOR’S NOTE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I should, perhaps, say from the first that I am neither
+Italian nor Fascist. Yet, having lived in Italy from 1913
+to 1927, I cannot but be conscious of the fact that the
+country has undergone a deep change, and have come to
+the conclusion that it is a change for the better. My
+purpose in writing this book has been to bring to the
+knowledge of people possessed of a fair amount of general
+knowledge, the conclusions that might be formed by a
+specialist with regard to this change and the value of it.
+Incidentally I have endeavoured to discourage both those
+who would import Fascism, as it flourishes in Italy, into
+other countries, and those who would hinder the spread
+of that philosophy which, I hold, is its basis.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary to avoid, when possible, definitely
+partisan sources of information; 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 failed.</p>
+
+<p>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 it. I am also most
+grateful to the following whom I have consulted as to
+historical or philosophical accuracy—Professor G. A.
+Smith, Professor G. C. Webb, Mrs. Anne MacCormick,
+Miss Jamison, Miss Mary Coate and Mr. R. G. Collingwood.</p>
+
+<p class="right">ALINE LION.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lady Margaret Hall,</i><br>
+<i>Oxford.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Part_I">
+    <span class="smcap">Part I</span>
+    <br>
+    THE POLITICAL ANTECEDENTS OF FASCISM
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">
+    CHAPTER I
+    <br>
+    IS FASCISM A REVOLUTION?
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>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 world. Strange to say,
+however, the light thrown by most of these publications fails
+to illuminate the points most interesting to foreigners. This
+is probably due first of all to the fact that most of the writers
+have written either for or against it; moreover, this movement,
+being peculiarly Italian, is difficult for a foreign
+mind to grasp. In any case, it is a fact that in spite of all the
+good or bad will of the journalists this revolution is far from
+being understood. The lack of intelligent information regarding
+it is felt everywhere; and it would be difficult to say
+whether the misrepresentation is greater among those who
+admire it and, seeing in it a universal remedy for all modern
+woes, want to introduce its method in other countries; or
+among those who consider it just as a matter of incidental
+and local politics. I shall try to put it in its historical setting,
+and I shall consider myself fortunate if I can throw light on
+its relation to the political past of Italy, and to the present
+political conceptions of other countries.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span></p>
+
+<p>The first question that invariably arises is whether
+Fascism is or is not a revolution. This, however, must be
+answered by another: what is a revolution? No word
+stands in greater need of a sound, common-sense definition,
+yet a definition of it stands on the very threshold of any
+impartial research on Fascism.</p>
+
+<p>Is revolution merely a change of government? This is not
+sufficient. If it were, the fall of Louis Philippe from the
+throne of France would be a revolution; yet it is obviously
+by a license that one speaks of it as the Revolution of ’48.
+The form of government may change without any substantial
+alteration of the régime. Then does revolution imply a
+change of régime? Yes, but, again, what is exactly a change
+of régime?</p>
+
+<p>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 Citizen, a new conception
+of political reality. It is, therefore, a doctrine, a
+system, and as such is philosophy expressing itself in
+history. This admitted, it is necessary to guard against the
+abstract bent. of philosophical researches. The deepest
+currents of speculative thought would never bring about a
+single change of government by themselves; but then they
+do not exist by themselves. It is only in the synthesis of
+history that we find them at play in the world of historical
+reality, which is what it is because thoughts and deeds are
+one.</p>
+
+<p>The March on Rome did certainly mark the confluence of
+two streams coming to mingle their waters between the
+banks of the Tiber. One was torrential, the impulse coming
+from a fifty years’ accumulation of economic and political
+mistakes in Italy. The other was deeper, slower, the contribution
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>of centuries of Italian philosophy enriched by the
+intellectual thought of all Europe. The torrent is represented
+by the political antecedents of Fascism: the deep
+stream by the philosophical antecedents of Fascism.</p>
+
+<p>To illustrate my figure a period of history presents itself
+as an example. It does not correspond exactly to the
+present movement in Italy, but it is at any rate familiar to
+one and all: the French Revolution. We see there, also,
+the typical stream of philosophical life carving a deep bed
+for the river to come: in the minds of intellectuals, in the
+consciousness of the people, abstract theories or works of
+artistic vulgarisation, prepare the bed for the river that
+will become, under the impulsion of actual circumstances,
+an irresistible torrent. So that this revolution whose intellectual
+pedigree makes it the offspring of Descartes, and
+Hobbes, of Grotius, Locke and the English political writers,
+besides the Encyclopædists, Voltaire and Rousseau, has to
+the highest degree the qualities that make it an element of
+universal life, and a fertilising principle in the politics of all
+Europe. On the other hand it receives, undoubtedly from
+the economic and political conditions of France, the particular
+determinations that distinguish it as French, as belonging
+to the eighteenth century. The form it took actually between
+1790 and 1795 could not be introduced anywhere else; under
+that form it was exclusively French, because—we must
+insist on the point—it had received it as its actual and concrete
+determination from its immediate antecedents.</p>
+
+<p>Actuation, realisation, concrete life, whatever the field
+we move in, whether we consider politics, artistic creation,
+or natural life, it requires two elements, the one universal,
+the other particular. Now history shows that the universal
+element spreads, notwithstanding frontiers and the will
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>of men. Its force of expansion is a quality common to all
+ideas; but the particular is not to be imported, and it is
+as impossible to introduce it in foreign lands as it is to
+confine the other to any land. Hence the political applications
+of the same theories in different countries differ
+from each other as do the countries themselves. These
+differences, economic, political, religious, intellectual,
+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
+nations.</p>
+
+<p>The Italian patriots at the end of the eighteenth century
+were very few, and all, without exception, intellectuals.
+Some belonged to the higher or lower aristocracy, some
+belonged to the upper middle class, but all were scholars,
+men of the widest reading. It would be difficult to find
+nowadays a body of men so well informed. For one thing,
+production has increased immensely and life has lost the
+leisure that allowed intellectual tastes to be satisfied. The
+fact remains that at the close of that century Italy could
+boast of men aware of its inferior position, of its non-existence
+as a nation. Such men were ready to try anything,
+and did try to imitate the French revolution in so
+far as they could by founding the small republics that
+lasted one season or two, dying away like plants of distant
+countries, when they are planted in our soil. Their zeal,
+however, was not sterile, they failed in their immediate
+purpose, because they wanted to introduce not only ideas
+but the actual form in which these were expressed. A
+constitution, a battle, the plan of a town, a project of
+economic reform, each of these things is an expression
+endowed with an æsthetic value varying with the degree
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>of perfection attained by the man who worked it out, and
+gave the idea that prompted him a suitable realisation.
+But the essential quality of the æsthetic creator is to be
+on a particular theme, the voice of his time and of the
+body of men he represents in his act of creation. The men
+of the revolution were by no means fair representatives
+of the people of France; but when they drew up the
+constitution they certainly realised on the whole the
+desiderata of most Frenchmen. Giving expression, giving
+form to the ideas that had agitated the whole century,
+they did it in the only way that could be a French way in
+those days.</p>
+
+<p>Now the will of Napoleon, when he wished Italy to be
+politically a copy of France, was a very empirical will, and
+the men who tried to carry out his wishes because they
+loved Italy were not any more transcendental. In this
+question they took no notice of what were the spiritual
+and political conditions of their country, and yet surely
+a constitution is an expression of mind. In all this however
+their blunder paved the way to a better understanding of
+the matter. Everybody realised that in order to have anything
+like an independent government the first thing was
+to be a great and unified country. When the ideas that
+had led in France to the Revolution and Republic were
+developed in Italy, according to the mentality of the great
+Italians, they blended with all that was particular to Italy
+and expressed themselves in an Italian movement: the
+Risorgimento. It cannot be over emphasised, for the
+importance of the point is great; the same ideas that
+caused the Republic to become for more than a century
+the form of French government, gave birth to the Kingdom
+of Italy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span></p>
+
+<p>Roughly, the same can be said of Fascism. Its ideas and
+doctrine will spread whether they meet with favour or hostility,
+because they are Italian just as Liberalism is English,
+that is to say they are Italian in their methods of actuation
+and perfectly universal in their philosophical content.</p>
+
+<p>“Equality, fraternity, liberty,” was the eighteenth
+century cry, and it might be the cry of the Fascists. Their
+revolutionary contribution to the history of politics is the
+denial of natural rights, natural rights being understood
+as something the determination of which is anterior to
+the birth of man, as the quality of a cabbage or a rose
+tree is anterior to its birth. Right is so narrowly linked to
+duty that for this school of thought it cannot be anterior
+to consciousness. Therefore man must be considered and
+rated in the State only according to spiritual value and
+actual economic or intellectual interest.</p>
+
+<p>The natural rights of man are denied. The spiritual
+value, entitling man to citizenship, cannot be acquired
+by him once for all and enjoyed without effort. He must
+daily and continuously be working for the vindication of
+the rights he has won, and for the conquest of those he
+seeks. Citizenship is not a chattel lying in a man’s possession:
+its only reality is bound to the performing of the
+duties correlative of rights. There Fascism meets with all
+our religious communities; in all Israelite and Christian
+Communities or Churches the new-born child is admitted
+on the pledge, taken for him by sponsors, that he will discharge
+his duties and accept the law of the community
+of which he becomes a member. Such a pledge he has to
+confirm on his coming to adult state.</p>
+
+<p>Citizenship becomes, finally, with the whole of political
+reality, a moral, spiritual and Christian reality, and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>only real equality of men can be attained in a State in
+which each man is rated according to actual value. For
+citizenship, taken as a birthright of man, is a remains of
+Pagan times, when it was the lot of some to be born slaves
+and of some to be born citizens.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">
+    CHAPTER II
+    <br>
+    LIBERALISM IN ITALY
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>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 universal.
+It is therefore necessary to trace, or at least attempt to
+trace, this pedigree in spite of the difficulty of the task.</p>
+
+<p>Fascism presents itself at first as being essentially the
+expression of the national consciousness of Italy. So it is;
+but it must be stated at once that it is the national consciousness
+recently acquired by the people of Italy, which,
+like an uncontrollable force, has worked itself out, taking
+Fascism as its expression. 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 country. The truth is, that though it is
+practically the epilogue of that drama, Fascism cannot be
+identified with the Risorgimento. 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 do. The wars of
+independence were due to the initiative of an aristocratic
+minority; whose aristocratic and intellectual qualities
+distinguished them and perhaps ensured their success.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>The leaders of the Risorgimento were not hampered by
+anything like a popular following; and their eventual
+agreement as to what was best for their cause was always
+made certain by this intellectual selectness. All were
+able, like Garibaldi and Mazzini, to see things as they
+were and to act accordingly, not only to the extent of
+sacrificing their lives but of sacrificing their dearest ideals
+as well. Republicans, they accepted monarchy; ministers,
+of their own free will they relinquished power to place it
+in hands they thought more fit than their own to realise
+their dream; staunch Catholics, during their life they
+fought the Church in its temporal politics, in an age when
+the best educated priests would not admit and could not
+even see the possibility of distinction between temporal
+and spiritual power. Only religious and idealistic men
+can realise by how much such sacrifices surpassed for
+them the gift of money, liberty, or even life. There is one
+English word that sums up what these Italian liberators
+were, whether noblemen, solicitors, writers, professors,
+officers, doctors: they were <i>gentlemen</i> of good classical
+education and wide reading who had assimilated what was
+best in Europe. The common people, one cannot insist
+too much upon the fact, remained indifferent at best, and
+that only as long as their interests were not affected; the
+lower middle class were hostile, 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
+things, were openly against any change. How could such
+people feel the need or see the possibility of building up a
+nation, one nation, out of the harlequin coat presented
+by the map of Italy?</p>
+
+<p>Thus a free hand was guaranteed to the small number
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>of Italian gentlemen then endowed with heroic souls.
+They had nobody to consult, they were a State in
+themselves, a State without a lower class. Perhaps for
+the last time in the history of the world we see there
+realised the classical republic without a political plebs.
+No wonder that they worked a miracle; they belonged
+politically to different states, and yet by the force of their
+ideal they attained that oneness of conscience which gives
+personality and reality to a nation. The spirit of the
+nation existed before its material realisation; there is no
+better illustration of the new notion that Fascism is
+bringing to the fore in the world of concrete history, that
+of the nation as a spiritual reality, independent of geographical
+and ethnographical determinations. Never in
+history has this notion received a more complete and
+actual realisation than in this first dawn of the national
+life in Italy. The reality of the nation had its first affirmation
+in the sacrifice of these men, for it is obvious that no
+sober man would give up life, liberty, wealth, for something
+unreal; and, in fact, the reality of Italy as a nation
+ceased to be questioned then and there.</p>
+
+<p>Every advantage, of course, has its disadvantage. As
+the pioneers of the Risorgimento did not need the people,
+they overlooked all the problems that the necessity of
+obtaining popular collaboration would have compelled
+them to face. All economic and social questions were overlooked
+except by a very few; the spiritual education of
+the lower class was not even suggested in their programme
+of action. Their aims were the independence and the
+political unity of Italy, and to that goal they directed their
+hearts and minds indifferent to the needs of practical life,
+and to all the obstacles that seemed to make their dream
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>a theme for the lyrical effusions of poets. In fact they were
+poets, all of them, for they created a reality out of an ideal
+vision that was more an intuition than an intellectual
+conception. The very manner in which they carried out
+their revolution was æsthetic more than practical; they
+shut their eyes to all that was in contradiction to their
+dream, exactly as the artist does who strives to express
+an intuition through material realisation, and in order
+not to let the objective world crowd his mind deliberately
+shuts his eyes to it, to everything that is not his present
+ideal.</p>
+
+<p>The economic and social questions could not in any
+case have been faced, still less dealt with, as long as the
+nation was not a political reality. Any attempt would
+have been sterile and perhaps even harmful. First, 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 population, 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 Italy. It was, moreover, expedient to
+hold to the singleness of purpose that was more likely to
+make action coherent all through the peninsula; only
+such singleness of aim made it possible to men of so
+different temperament and breeding as professional men
+and noblemen, Tuscans and Sicilians, Freemasons and
+ardent Catholics, to think and therefore to act in positive
+harmony.</p>
+
+<p>When a bullet has hit the bull’s-eye it has fulfilled its
+purpose, and stays there in helpless immobility or falls
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>to the ground a useless thing. It was meant for that shot,
+and is bound to be purposeless when it has made its mark.
+The generations of Carlo Alberto and Mazzini, of Vittorio
+Emmanuele and Cavour, had certainly hit the mark when
+Rome had become the capital of Italy. 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 task? Or could it be that the realisation
+of the new State should bring, as its immediate consequence,
+a ready-made generation of statesmen? Indeed,
+if there is one thing that cannot be produced by a magic
+wand, it is a body of able and trained political men.</p>
+
+<p>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 life.
+Inspiration and idealism proved out of place, and although
+theirs was, what would have been called in England or in
+France, a Conservative government, they had to rely on
+a very strange electoral body. While they did not extend
+the vote at once, they found in the middle class a set of
+Arrivists with an imperative egoism that was to prove
+the curse of political life in Italy. It is difficult for an
+English, French, or American citizen to realise the kind
+of problems with which these men were beset. Above all
+it is difficult to an Englishman; England has had five or
+six centuries of political experience, 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 legislature. In Italy, on the other hand, 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
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>life on a cinema film. He passes from childhood to youth,
+and on to manhood, maturity and old age in a couple of
+hours. If he actually could crowd all experience into a
+couple of years the proportion would be better; 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
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Now no student of the history of politics, or even of art,
+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 arise, and that out of criticism
+comes the idea, confused at first, then clearer and clearer,
+of the form that is to supersede it. This is, in fact, the
+process of dialectic: it is the dialectic of history; and in
+spite of the wish to avoid any special terminology, it is
+better to call the process by its own name. At first people
+struggle to reach a certain form of government, and that
+moment of dialectic ends when the form is reached; they
+then apply it more and more fully and, during its application,
+discover its limitations; this second moment ends
+in criticism of the whole theory; finally they set themselves
+to remedy its shortcomings. This last moment
+coincides in the people with the free consciousness of dissatisfaction,
+and in the leaders with a clear understanding
+of the new tendencies to be satisfied, so that it is not
+theoretical to say that the people learn to use a new form
+whilst they are using, then discarding, the one that came
+before it. In Italy nothing of the sort happened. The
+international culture of its scholars put them in contact
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>with all that was best or worst in the politics of Europe.
+They would have been ashamed to be behindhand in
+what was considered social progress.</p>
+
+<p>Then two uncommon factors came into play after 1870.
+To make Italy, it had been necessary to trample upon a
+good deal of historical tradition. Not all the local governments
+were as bad during the eighteenth century as they
+were said to be. Moreover, paramount had been the
+prestige of the Popes. Against all the Conservative forces
+the men of the Risorgimento had appeared as a lot of
+Jacobins; they had to fight the Church in its temporal
+power, and although this power was not essential to
+religion it had behind it a tradition of ten centuries. With
+the government of the Popes the whole Italian civilisation
+was closely connected; indeed, the best brains of Italy
+have always realised that, whatever the faults of the
+Church, Italy is first of all a Catholic country. Anti-clericals
+in their political activity, men like de Sanctis,
+would not have printed a word against the Church as
+historians. Indeed, the greatest thinkers of the time,
+Gioberti and Rosmini, tried very hard to be good Catholics
+and great philosophers at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>Yet since they could not doubt that Italy must have
+Rome for its capital as the seal of its political unity, the
+Popes had to be deprived of their temporal sovereignty.
+The feeling about Rome was one of historical mysticism,
+and seldom, if ever, have men found themselves thrown
+into an irreligious attitude by a sentiment of that kind.
+No contradiction could have been more profound, 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 past. However,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>there was no alternative; adopting Illuminism as one of
+the chief currents animating modern life, they had as their
+most precious support the anti-Catholic movement, to
+which, as a matter of fact, a great many of them belonged.
+Anti-Catholicism had a great weakness in that it was not
+a national product, but had been introduced into political
+life as a necessary stimulant to rouse the people from their
+slumbers, as will be seen later on; now that they were
+awake it divided the nation and prevented the welding of
+the new tradition to its history of twenty centuries.</p>
+
+<p>The statesmen of this epoch had no experience of the
+administration and government of a big State: they were
+not conscious of the problems of international relations;
+they knew nothing of the economic and social exigencies
+of a population exceeding thirty millions of souls.</p>
+
+<p>The people had no political education whatsoever. On
+the other hand, the leaders would not be retrograde and
+became more and more liberal, at a rate that did not allow
+the people to be prepared by experience for successive
+steps in popular government. The sequence of reforms
+was not historical, was not dialectical: it did not correspond
+with the spiritual and economic development of the
+people, but was introduced to make up for lost time and
+bring Italy up to the Western European level as fast as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>With no tradition to make up ballast, the so-called
+“Right” could not be termed Conservative because it
+originated in a revolution, and it kept its old ideal as a
+target after it had been realised, and therefore had ceased
+to be a principle of action.</p>
+
+<p>What was to be expected under such conditions? The
+wonder is that the nation did not go to pieces, and that the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>work of two generations of constructive men was not
+destroyed by their incapacity to husband what they had
+created. In the face of such facts one cannot help thinking
+of Vico and his identification of divine Providence with
+the rationality of history. This people was politically at
+the nursery stage; it had no modern political science of
+its own, and therefore none of its legislative acts were
+based on actual and practical understanding of what were
+the national necessities. They were inspired by the
+example of foreign governments and, consequently, could
+not meet Italy’s peculiar necessities. What did for the
+others could not do for Italy. Yet it was impossible to
+keep back a people so well informed of modern progress.</p>
+
+<p>The Italian Liberals, it must be said for their immortal
+fame, had the clear-sightedness necessary to attain their
+aims, inasmuch as they had reduced them to a formula
+that could be accepted by all the other patriots. “Italy,
+one and free,” was their aim, and to this aim nobody could
+object. The flaw of such an aim is that it is too simple to
+correspond to actual reality. It sounds like an algebraical
+axiom, and, indeed, is just as abstract in its basis as any
+mathematical formula.</p>
+
+<p>For the Liberals the nation was exclusively constituted
+by its territorial expansion and by the unification of the
+people of the different states therein included. They could
+not change their aim, and when they had to administer
+the new realm their eagerness and singleness of purpose
+often blinded them to reality. As the unity they had
+reached was formal, if one can term it so, their legislation
+purposely ignored the differences between Sicilians and
+Tuscans; and in their haste to unify internally what was
+already externally one, they imposed what could at best
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>be formal and artificial unity. Every annexation had been
+preceded by a local struggle, and success was not sufficient
+to cause equanimity in the triumphant party. All that
+had existed under the old régime was an object of hatred
+to the Liberals; and their ministers, even when they
+kept above such feelings, were none the less unable to discriminate
+between the antiquated local laws and those
+that were still useful and even good. They destroyed local
+institutions, often created to meet actual requirements, to
+impose, for instance, upon the people of Sicily Piedmontese
+laws, the inspiration of which was usually imported
+from France or England. They had the impression
+that it would be dangerous to the unity of the country to
+keep some of the local laws, or to make new ones to meet
+the particular needs of this or that province. In the minds
+of these passionate creators of unity, unity was a quite
+fragile affair, produced by them <i>ex tempore</i>; they did
+not see that it could only be the result of a slow elaboration,
+bound to go on for generations, 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 country.</p>
+
+<p>The same singleness of vision was to prove blinding in
+regard to several other points; 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 gentlemen,
+led those in power to consider the higher classes as exclusively
+constituting the nation they had brought into
+being. The rest were politically non-existent; and in
+the haste to develop the commercial and industrial possibilities
+of the country a good deal too much was done
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>to enthrone capital and invite thereby the advent of
+Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, another cause of trouble—indeed, another consequence
+of the same lack of political tradition and education—was
+the impossibility of forming proper party
+organisations. Who was Left—and who was Right?
+Discrimination was impossible. Parties, like all historical
+organisms, are called into being and developed according
+to, and in consequence of, the political development of
+the country. In Italy they had to be produced, planned
+and organised all at once, by the mere empirical decisions
+of men, who, whatever their ability, or the loftiness of
+their ideals, could not avoid the arbitrariness and the
+errors to which the best individual men are subject,
+limited as their views are by their personal feelings or
+ambitions. Therefore, what happened was this: some
+followers of Mazzini who had joined the Liberals in the
+struggle for liberty, stood out as republicans; some who
+had followed Garibaldi and who had for ten years longed
+to take Rome from the Pope, became anti-clerical democrats;
+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 Freemason, whilst another might have had strong
+democratic tendencies and yet stand for tradition. The
+best instance of this may have been Crispi: he belonged
+to the Left, and certainly often acted and felt like a man
+of the Right.</p>
+
+<p>Such confusion was to reach its climax when, after 1866
+and 1870, it was understood that the king and the government,
+having obtained the Veneto from Austria, had given
+up the intention of adding Trento and Trieste to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>kingdom. Then the extreme Left joined irredentism to
+its anti-Catholic activity. They went on speaking of the
+ethnographic right that such provinces had to claim
+themselves as Italian, and they artfully bound their
+anti-religious campaign to a programme that sounded
+highly idealistic. No wonder that the different governments
+that succeeded each other should lose their time
+fighting the ghost of financial bankruptcy. One thing only
+can be brought against them, and it is that though all
+men of great culture they did not understand how unhistorical
+were their actions. They should have known
+that their conception of State and citizen, their idea of
+what is the function of the government, had been taken
+ready made from other countries and lazily accepted
+without any proper study of its antecedents. Some were
+Anglophile, some under their new Germanophilism hid
+the most perfect assimilation of French doctrines taken
+in their easiest and, therefore, most abstract formulas.
+None took liberty for what the word had meant of actual
+and positive political conquest to the average Englishman
+of the seventeenth century; they did not even take it for
+what it had meant of practical improvement to the
+Frenchman of the eighteenth century; they took it as
+a rhetorical figure with an abstract concept behind it,
+as soon as it ceased to mean independence from foreign
+rule.</p>
+
+<p>They termed themselves Liberals, however, and when
+they came to be ministers of a Liberal government they
+professed sometime a very curious notion of what such
+a government should be; Cairoli put it down in three
+words, <i>reprimere non prevenire</i>; an excellent motto perhaps,
+when the citizens are used to the exercise of their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>duties and rights, but soon proved to be dangerous in a
+country where traditions had been trampled upon during
+half a century. In less than a decade Italy was the prey
+of anarchy, for in 1878, the same Cairoli, had to defend
+the king’s life in Naples at the risk of his own, and in
+Florence and Pisa bombs were thrown against the crowds
+rejoicing over the king’s narrow escape. The Liberals
+looked at the way legislation worked in France and in
+England, but, like all followers of Illuminism, they took
+it for granted that there existed a certain kind of animal
+which was the same wherever and whenever you find Man,
+and they looked at the application of the system, not at
+its origin, not at its philosophical and political antecedents;
+in short, they did not see that it was brought
+about by the whole history of the countries in which it
+flourished, and they believed that it would work wherever
+men lived together in nations.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">
+    CHAPTER III
+    <br>
+    NATIONALISM AND SOCIALISM
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Under such circumstances what was the government for the
+political classes? A coach in a land of brigands; for the
+most popular elements a coach to be attacked on the roadside;
+for the better elements, a coach they had a right to
+drive, whip in hand. Every man stood up against the government
+either begging or threatening; so that it is no wonder
+that the next generation of gentlemen mostly stood aside
+and shunned politics, seeing that at best the men who mixed
+in it were moved by selfish ambition, or were a vulgar crew
+of Arrivists and mischief plotters. Abstention on the one
+side was, however, a form of selfishness, as harmful to the
+state as Arrivism on the other. Provided they kept clean
+hands, 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 slumber.
+Obviously their withdrawal from public life had the same
+cause as the ambition and the unscrupulous opportunism of
+the others. After fifty years of heroic life and feelings, they
+wanted to attend to their own business and enjoy life privately.
+Public cares and struggles had been the order of the
+day for half a century, and public conscience relaxed; with
+a sudden eclipse of national consciousness, 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 world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span></p>
+
+<p>Its foreign policy is the best index of the spiritual conditions
+of the period, and according to the historian, Michele
+Rosi (who is neither a Fascist nor a Liberal, nor a Socialist,
+because he is a man born to put together facts, historical
+facts, and live a passionate life among them instead of living
+it among men) 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 others. Rosi
+does not say so, but the facts he puts together do say so.</p>
+
+<p>Of this the best proof was the Triple Alliance. In 1873
+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 court.
+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 Trieste, whereas it had never been thought in the past
+that Rome or Venice might have been so abandoned. In
+Parliament, however, the Left was quite willing to lean on
+the shoulder of Germany, and was submitting even to an
+alliance with Austria, although some of the members had
+dark remembrances of its rule. But at the same time they
+flirted with France, who was going more and more to the
+Left, and whose anti-clericalism seemed to cheer on their
+own anti-Catholicism.</p>
+
+<p>In 1877 Francesco Crispi, the best statesman of Italy at
+the time, 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 Right, made a diplomatic tour to the capitals
+of Germany, Austria, France and England. He had one open
+aim, and another one not quite so fully acknowledged, which
+was to look for support against a possible aggression that
+was feared both from Paris and Vienna. The impression he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>received was that Berlin might accept an alliance with Italy
+against France, on the understanding that Austria would be
+left free to do what she liked in the East. Thirty years
+before, Italy, still in the making and far from seeing yet her
+way to unity, had attacked single-handed the greatest
+empire of Europe in an offensive war; now, out of fear of a
+possible attack from France, which Bismarck himself
+declared very unlikely, she entered into an alliance from
+which she received only orders and prohibitions. When the
+Congress of Berlin took place, all that the representative of
+Italy could do was of so little avail, that the Germans
+declared that the French and the Italians had to settle
+the question of Tunis between themselves. This did not
+admit of any compensation to Italy for the Austrian
+occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and expansion in the
+East. The Italian policy at that congress betrayed a total
+incapacity to display the policy of a great State in
+foreign affairs. The reasons were threefold, the men in
+power had a very poor understanding of the forces and
+the interests of the country and, in consequence, could not
+act according to these; they were holding on to ideologies,
+that had served their time and whose high-sounding
+rhetoric could only help them to hide the vacuum of their
+minds; finally, 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 stood.</p>
+
+<p>Negative as it was, the attitude of the government was
+in harmony with that of Parliament. When, in January,
+1879, the Senate disapproved of its foreign policy, the
+head of the government, who was Depretis, shifted all
+responsibility by saying that, as Prime Minister, he had in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>that department followed faithfully the traditions of the
+Right, although he belonged to the Left. In February of
+the same year, Mussolino strongly advised them to enter
+into an alliance with Germany; he knew, said he, that
+Bismarck would accept it unwillingly, as he believed the
+Italians to be unfaithful, but that he would do so nevertheless,
+needing Italy against France. Nothing could be
+less heroic, than a Senate which had good grounds to feel
+pride in the newly achieved national independence, and
+was yet so low spirited that it could accept an alliance
+on such grounds.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal of the Risorgimento had been realised, and
+as the new leaders <i>had no new ideals</i> they had nothing
+further to realise; they were bodies without souls, with
+nothing that might give them a chance to display the
+gifts with which nature had so largely endowed them.
+Materialists in philosophy they strove to make the
+country more and more materialist, fighting religion under
+the names of clericalism and obscurantism.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously what kept the various governments of Italy
+from having a dignified foreign policy was that the
+country was in a state bordering on anarchy. One cause
+of this was lack of experts in all the political classes,
+devoid, as the best men were, of personal or traditional
+experience to help in the application of their imported
+legislation; but the main cause was undoubtedly the
+amorphous state of the working classes. If man is to be
+called a political animal, the labourers of Italy were not
+men fifty years ago. They did not care what happened and
+did not think they had anything to say in the matter: they
+were politically unconscious. Not that they were stupid:
+their art, their songs, their traditions attest the contrary.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span></p>
+
+<p>Their political unconsciousness, far from making things
+easier, rendered a good Liberal government very nearly
+impossible; for apathy and indifference in the lower
+class, while it may be very well under an absolute monarchy
+of the patriarchal type, under a Liberal constitution
+is apt to prove a curse. First, the lower middle class kept
+drawing men from the people, and these men, with the
+natural gift of adaptation the Italian shows to a greater
+degree than the slower northern races, 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 working.
+Among these men and among the crowds of half-intellectuals
+employed by the State in the innumerable offices
+created by the centralising administration, in the national
+schools, in the railways, post services and so on, the
+members of Parliament, who belonged to the Left, recruited
+their votes. 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 emphasised. The dates are eloquent, Rome
+became the capital of Italy in 1870, in 1882 the franchise
+is extended, and immediately a workman, Maffi, and a
+pure Socialist, Andrea Costa, are elected.</p>
+
+<p>Without attempting a sketch of the development of
+Socialism in Italy, it must be said that it certainly did a
+great deal of good to the country. It aroused the working
+masses from their slumber and bettered their material
+conditions, which badly wanted bettering. To stir the
+people out of their amorphous state and make them conscious
+of their rights was a very wholesome operation. It
+would have been better to have made them realise at the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>same time that rights never go without duties, and that
+to co-operate in public life they had to undertake the one
+in order to get the other. But this, however, was more
+than could be expected from agitators, who often had,
+themselves, a very poor notion of the relation of right
+and duties. Their incitement to the people was to make
+material well-being, the ultimate end of all effort.</p>
+
+<p>Vulgar as it was, yet it was the proper aim for a
+materialistic age, and it had the advantage of being concrete,
+positive, and within range of the people’s rudimentary
+political understanding. Therefore it worked. It had
+the first quality that an idea must have to move people
+to action; it corresponded to the real needs of the workers.</p>
+
+<p>The nobler side of Socialism, that which had made it
+highly idealistic and has made its ultimate end a dreamy
+Messianism, did not strike root in Italy. It did not appeal
+to the people, and whenever it fascinated some stray poet
+or idealist, like Andrea Costa or Mussolini’s father, they
+failed to arouse an echo in the minds of the labourers.
+This should have been sufficient to show that it did not
+suit the Italian mentality. Mankind, the fraternity of
+mankind, the lost paradise reconquered by the mutual
+love of men, could not mean much to Italian ears. It
+sounded abstract, and at best did not show much chance
+of being realised by the present generation. The Socialist
+leaders had to attract followers with more concrete things,
+with plans that could be realised, and to arouse in them a
+passion for an actual object. Consequently they harped
+on the necessity of getting better wages for less work.
+They planned Labour organisations which gradually grew
+stronger, and they taught the workers to hate their
+employers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span></p>
+
+<p>Yet this was not the worst part of the leaders’ activity;
+that was the corrupting consciousness they gave the
+workers of an unlimited political power without any
+corresponding duties. Out of unfairly treated men they
+made bullies, most unhappy bullies, the worst kind of
+bullies. The torture of Mussolini’s youth was this rapid
+decadence of Socialism in Italy, although it had the
+advantage over other parties of a stock of general ideas
+and a definite programme. It was only the weakness of
+other parties which made it look strong until the war and
+during the years that followed the peace; for as far back
+as 1910 the historic ideas it had brought to Italy had
+yielded their crop. Had it not been so, Socialism, between
+1918 and 1920, would have worked out in open revolution.
+As it was, it had built up a class organisation that was the
+first regular Party in modern Italy, and this meant
+considerable experience for the whole nation; it had
+besides bettered the material conditions of life of the lower
+class and awakened them to political consciousness, which
+is a contribution to the development of the country as a
+modern State that cannot be overrated.</p>
+
+<p>Liberalism, be it of the Right or of the Left, had had
+an Italian form, which had proved its consonance with
+the historical position of the country by the efficiency
+with which it had realised its ideal. Italy, free from
+foreign rule and politically one under the House of Savoy,
+was doubtless the creation of Italian Liberalism. But as a
+home governing party its inefficiency was obvious; one
+may think that its failure was due to its non-national
+stock of ideas, 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
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>Liberalism had come out of a long historical evolution.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism, on the other hand, was yeast, and as yeast
+it was very good for Italy, for the unleavened masses rose
+into shape and life under its action; thereby emerging from
+their amorphousness they entered into the political world
+and brought with them the force and life of numbers. 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 needed, as their singleness
+of aim and the loftiness of their ideals had been
+sufficient to keep their high-minded members in unity.
+Yet it proved a curse, as its leaders were unable to realise
+that the wretched means they had to resort to, in order to
+arouse men into action, were due to the fact that the higher
+side of Socialism did not fit the mentality of the people.</p>
+
+<p>Another party must be now considered, and that commands
+a great deal of respect from any foreigner that may
+have watched with loving eyes the life of Italy:
+Nationalism. Corradini and Federzoni may be looked
+upon as its leaders, and their followers were a mere
+handful of men. They had a clear notion of what they
+wanted, and to a certain extent they may be considered
+as the rightful heirs of the Risorgimento. Again they
+were all gentlemen, gentlemen being taken as the
+English equivalent of <i>vir</i>, implying the sterling quality
+of the individual and not at all his social position or his
+æsthetic refinement, which may be merely the consequence
+of wealth. 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
+men. But then the crucial point is that their convictions
+must have magnetic attraction for the general public.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>And the Nationalists had not this. Their ideas were too
+high and, at the same time, they were obsolete, besides
+being no more Italian than those of Liberalism or Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>The Nationalists’ idea of a nation was as materialist as
+their aims were idealist.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Now this would be sufficient to
+condemn to sterility the best wills in the world. To state
+this plainly, the easiest way is to take man as a simile for
+nation. There are two ways of looking at a man: he is
+<i>one out of many</i>, or he is <i>the one central reality</i>. As one out
+of many he knocks in every sense against the reality of the
+many, and is therefore identified by his very limitations.
+Such a conception of the man is evidently negative. He
+is appreciated not so much by what he actually does, but
+by what he has done, or possesses; not so much by what
+he is, but by the rank he occupies, and which may often
+be determined independently of his <span class="allsmcap">ACTUAL</span> value. But
+as the one central reality a man cannot come into competition
+with other objects of appreciation; he can no
+longer be gauged from outside. Now, obviously, from the
+world of objective and natural reality, we are shifting to
+the subjective and spiritual world. We have in front of
+us no longer an individual belonging to the world of things—we
+have a person. Common wisdom has for centuries
+professed that to understand a person’s motives it is
+necessary to put oneself in that person’s position; and
+daily experience shows that we understand the people we
+love better, because we can make ourselves one with them
+and judge them from their own point of view. To appreciate
+a personality this method is indispensable; for it is
+not in the deeds of his past that a man must be judged—he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>may have been a hero in the last war and be a coward
+in his present family life—they are now extrinsic to him,
+unless he goes on living them and making them for ever his
+spiritual experience. He must be judged by what he is doing
+actually. Neither must one measure him by his property,
+but by what he is still able to produce; nor by the regard
+or contempt of the people who surround him, which is
+based on what he has done; nor on what his people were,
+but by what he actually is. 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
+achievement, or his property, to that of other people.
+Past deeds should not raise him one whit in our appreciation
+unless he continues them with perfect conscience of
+their value, for their actual and his personal value depend
+exclusively of the conscience he has of such value and of
+his aptitude to keep it actual.</p>
+
+<p>Of this fact Corradini and his friends had excellent
+examples in Italy. Some of the landlords, who owned
+relatively small estates and quite insufficient capital,
+managed to bring their land to the highest rate of productiveness,
+so that the actual production was superior
+to that of estates of a much bigger acreage. The owners of
+the <i>latifondi</i>, on the other hand, were not all sufficiently
+rich to have their lands ploughed, and those who were
+did not always do so, although some Roman princes did
+cultivate thoroughly, very often as much from patriotism
+as from the wish to increase their incomes. Conspicuous
+among them were some leading Nationalists. 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 capital, and that it varied according to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>the consciousness he had of what the value of his estate
+should be and the capacity he had for realising it. But
+they did not think of the nation as of a man whose value,
+practically as well as spiritually, depends not so much on
+the capacity he has for doing things, as on his being
+conscious of such capacity. Therefore, they looked at
+Italy measuring it by the poor figure it cut in foreign
+policy, by its colonies, by its financial weakness, comparing
+it always in their minds with other countries; in a word,
+judging it from outside as if it had belonged to the field
+of natural science instead of belonging to the world of
+history, which is after all the world of Mind.</p>
+
+<p>Thank God, however, “<i>le coeur a des raisons que la
+raison ne connaît pas</i>,” and some of these men, Corradini
+above all, were men with great hearts and deep souls. Out
+of faith and love of their country they realised what their
+conception of political reality would have kept them from
+seeing, namely that the root of all the evil was that the
+people of Italy had almost allowed the stifling of their
+souls. Religion in some provinces had been, so to speak,
+extirpated by the anti-Catholic democrats, republicans
+and radicals; both religion and patriotism had been
+lulled to sleep by the Socialists. The only political cell
+still living and strong was the family. The Nationalists
+were beset by another cause of sterility, the men these
+leaders recruited ... did they share their religious and
+truly patriotic motives? All did not, and that was the
+misery of it. Yet Corradini and some others were men of
+faith, just as much as Cavour and Mazzini had been; they
+could get men to join them in holding aloft a torch whose
+flame flickered in the cold twilight of Garibaldi’s Italy.
+They kept the sacred fire of Rome burning, and openly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>preached self-sacrifice, whilst great artists and sceptic
+scholars invited the youth of the upper class to enjoy
+life and shut themselves up in selfish existence.</p>
+
+<p>The Nationalists were men of faith, and as everything
+is possible to him that believeth, 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 one. For the Nationalists the nation
+was a transcendent reality, objectively considered as to
+the individual. Such conception is not peculiar to Italy
+by any means; yet it was modified in its Italianisation, but
+always in a way that made it more and more a policy for
+the gentry. A good deal of culture (I don’t mean philosophy,
+but a true sense of history and a sound judgment)
+was at the basis of it, and this did not tend to make it a
+popular movement. To sacrifice oneself to something
+transcendent, to an historical construction, is not for the
+mob: not even for the lower middle classes, absorbed as
+they are by the problems of daily life.</p>
+
+<p>There we touch what really distinguishes the Fascists
+from the Nationalists, for whom the State belongs to
+natural reality, is transcendent in its relation to the
+individual, and negatively conceived in its relation to
+other states, where it appears one amongst many. It is
+a great engine that needs the co-operation of all the
+citizens to make it work, but it <i>does</i> exist independently
+of the citizens. Philosophically this conception belongs
+to the eighteenth century. For the Fascists, the State is
+not transcendent in its relation to the citizens: it is
+immanent; it is their own spiritual and economical life
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>in its political summing up. In its relation to other states
+it is not negatively conceived as one amongst many; for
+its citizens, it is their national self, whilst the other
+nations are constitutive of their national non-self. The
+positiveness of the State for its citizens implies therefore,
+for them, the negativeness of the other states.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Such a
+conception sounds merely theoretical, and yet it was not
+born in words. Its painful birth was the outcome of
+Mussolini’s experience as a Socialist and a party leader.
+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 who, in
+1911, were condemning him at Forli. Besides this very curt
+answer, he never expressed it except in deeds, so that the
+form under which it is given here is contributed by the
+author. The rest of the doctrine that can be inferred from
+his four years’ speeches, legislation and administration,
+can be traced in the whole of the philosophical works produced
+by Italian idealism; but this, although perfectly
+consonant above all with Gentile’s theories, was certainly
+one of Mussolini’s most original ideas.</p>
+
+<p>The task of the government is to raise the level and
+increase the value of the citizens, attending not to the
+organisation of every branch of life manifestation, but to
+the regulation or rather systematisation of such organisation
+in order to have always the most intimate fusion of
+state and citizens. The empirical self requires that the
+peasant should plough his field, sow the seed and reap
+the harvest. All this he is bound to do to satisfy his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>material needs and the work thus considered is certainly
+not ennobling, since man works as the slave of hunger.
+Fascism says to the peasant: “Thou shalt no longer
+plough, sow, reap for thyself, that is to say <i>exclusively for
+thy material self, but for the State, which is that same
+empirical self plus its transcendental complement</i>.” Hence
+ploughing, sowing and reaping are no longer the work of
+man, slave of his material needs, but of man transcending
+them, <i>without disregarding them</i>, however, and lifting
+thereby his daily occupation to the dignity of moral
+realisation of his own economic value.</p>
+
+<p>The only precedent that this application of Fascism
+seems to have had is the Christian sanctification of work,
+which is undoubtedly one of the noblest gifts bestowed
+by our religion upon mankind. The study of Fascism as
+a doctrine will offer many such coincidences.</p>
+
+<p>The State must be universally present as a moral
+factor in every branch of its citizens’ activity. It is in
+fact the all-pervading consciousness that man must have of
+his citizenship which expresses itself as the government.
+Obviously extension of territory should be immaterial
+if the people of a country could actually be lifted to this
+high state of political realisation.</p>
+
+<p>But even at the stage reached by Fascism it is easy to
+see how it affects the policy of foreign states towards
+Italy. 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 value, then you can very nearly cease to trouble about
+foreign policy, which must be the projection of the home
+policy, that is to be the supreme affair of a government
+intent on the valorisation of its country.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">
+    CHAPTER IV
+    <br>
+    THE EUROPEAN WAR AND ITS EFFECTS
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In March, 1914, the cabinet of Giolitti retired owing to
+some differences with the Radicals. 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 Italy. Sonnino, leader of the Opposition and one of the
+best men that the Right could boast of, refused to form
+a new cabinet and managed to have the office entrusted
+to Salandra. The German Emperor, passing through
+Venice on his way to Corfou, had a long talk with the king
+and the Marquis of San Giuliano, the fact being considered
+a new proof of Italo-German friendship apparently even
+by the government, whose endeavours were all directed
+to secure a majority in both Houses and to avert the storm
+that was threatening at home.</p>
+
+<p>The railways were on the verge of a general strike, the
+state officials were demanding better wages and tried to
+enforce their requests by forming a trade union; workmen
+and peasants made riots in various provinces,
+especially in the Romagne and Marche, where in June the
+Red Week gave the spectacle almost of a revolution.
+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 revolution.
+Salandra and his ministers were so beset that they let
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>foreign affairs go unheeded or at least treated them as a
+matter of minor urgency. It must have been a great shock
+to them to realise the imminence of war.</p>
+
+<p>When the war broke out involving all the great European
+Powers the public generally believed Italy to be
+bound to back the Triple Alliance. Immediately the
+Socialists and the extreme Left stirred up a campaign on
+the ground that the Italian people were pacifists and
+supporters of international Socialism. It is not easy to
+say whether, even had it been pledged to do so, the
+government would have been able to obtain the support
+of the nation to enter war immediately. Morally the people
+were not ready to accept a war without attack or without
+provocation from somebody.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> On the first of August
+Italy declared neutrality and on that day the <i>Giornale d’Italia</i>
+clearly stated that such neutrality was not like that
+of Holland or Switzerland, and above all should not be
+considered as definitive.</p>
+
+<p>The tenor of the press showed on which side an
+eventual intervention of Italy would take place. Everybody
+was either neutralist or interventionist, but nobody
+was in favour of an intervention on the side of the Triple
+Alliance. The most Germanophile never went farther
+than neutralism; all that they hoped and prayed for was
+the non-intervention of Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The argument of the neutralist papers was based on a
+statement of the economic and individual sacrifices that
+war would involve, and a plea that Italy could not yet be
+fit to enter such a conflict. Anti-idealists or sceptics (as
+many of the sons of the heroes of the Risorgimento were)
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>they all agreed to regard life as the supreme value and
+material well-being as its natural frame. Of war they
+only saw the destructive side. They were certainly logical.
+A conception of life so thoroughly materialist could not
+permit of a higher view of war; 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 changes, and the industrial
+and commercial stimulus carried in its trail. The immediate
+consequences are certainly unsettling and paralysing
+to business.</p>
+
+<p>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 opponents. France, Belgium and
+England were identified with right and civilisation,
+Germany and Austria with wrong and barbarity. Therefore
+Italy should have the honour of being among the
+righteous avengers of liberty and civilisation against their
+traditional foe, barbarity. This opposition of two abstractions
+to the materialism of their opponents betrayed
+the ideologic heirloom of the eighteenth century, so dear
+to the self-admiring minds of the educated mob. For
+there is such a thing as an educated mob and it is sure to
+be on the side that offers a high sounding rhetoric, a certain
+number of stock phrases and a fascinating ideology. It is
+so much easier to accept ready-made ideas than to work
+them out from actual reality.</p>
+
+<p>It was not likely, however, that such claptrap should
+move the people to war. Fortunately, there was another
+side to the question and that was the chance of getting
+Trento and Trieste, in whose intellectual life the old
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>spirit of the Risorgimento had kept two strongholds. All
+that was Liberal and traditional in the Italy of the nineteenth
+century rose to the bait. The highest form of
+Italian Liberalism and its aftermath Nationalism, unfurled
+their standard with the old zest and their followers
+displayed their immortal eagerness to make this last
+addition to their forerunners’ building of Italy. Not only
+were they splendid in the propaganda days, but they were
+the first to enlist, and both young Nationalists and old
+Liberals made it a point that “no gentleman should stay
+at home.” Naturally the echo they aroused was far from
+being general. If all the Liberals and the Nationalists
+were gentlemen not all the so-called gentlemen belonged
+to these parties; there was as much political indifference
+among the higher classes as among the lower. 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
+Nationalism.</p>
+
+<p>This much being said in praise of the Nationalists, 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
+farther. It was indeed the last flare of their imported
+notions of political reality. For nearly five centuries
+intellectual tradition had bestowed upon Italians a mentality
+which is historical nearly beyond understanding for
+foreigners. It will be traced back in another chapter from
+Dante’s <i>De Monarchia</i>, but it may be here taken from its
+first practical assertion. Machiavelli, at the end of the
+fifteenth century, acting as Chancellor and Secretary of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>Florence, was honoured with the unlimited trust of the
+<i>Gonfaloniere a vita</i> and in every respect proved himself
+worthy of such high consideration. He was exceedingly
+grateful to the man who entrusted him with missions, the
+official charge of which could not have been legally
+bestowed upon him. Yet, whatever his regard for the
+high-mindedness of his principal, from a close study and
+strict observation of political facts he came to the conclusion
+that nothing could prevent the Gonfaloniere’s
+policy from failure.</p>
+
+<p>Dino was elected <i>Gonfaloniere a vita</i> 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 Florence. 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 made, for bad or good, by the civilisation
+of the time. 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 Angelico, and that of Signorelli
+who introduced realism in his own vigorous art. Good
+Dino, however, having been chosen Gonfaloniere to bring
+Florence back to its former virtuous ways, looked to the
+old Republican days for a model of government, 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 done. Machiavelli was no optimist, but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>whatever the weakness of his conception of history due
+to the philosophical notions of his time, he did not give
+himself up entirely to abusing the wickedness of the people.
+Sure enough, they were wicked—far more so than they
+had been before the Medicean had corrupted them—yet
+they were above all different and had, therefore, to be
+governed according to different ideas.</p>
+
+<p>It is no wonder, therefore, that the Florentine Secretary
+should have spent so many hours of his enforced leisure
+after the realisation of the event, the inevitability of which
+had so long haunted him, to warn his contemporaries and
+the posterity of the necessity of governing not according
+to a mummified ideal, but in harmony with one’s own
+time. <i>Bisogna riscontrarsi coi propri tempi</i> and to do so
+he recommends the statesman again and again to get
+direct information of that which he calls <i>la verità effettuale
+delle cose</i>, that is effective or actual truth in matter of
+politics. 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 dark.</p>
+
+<p>In 1915 such an excellent jurisconsult as Prof. Salandra
+and such a first-rate diplomat as Sonnino seemed to
+realise but little that such a principle existed. At best
+they harped on Trento and Trieste, when they did not
+display their rhetoric on the conflict between civilisation
+and barbarity. Still this territorial conquest, whatever its
+importance as a traditional ideal to realise, was presented
+above all as a rectification of the northern frontiers
+strictly necessary for the safety of the nation and ethnologically
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>justified. 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
+entity, that which entitles a collectivity to have ethnological
+frontiers, in short a national conscience and a
+national will.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody seemed to realise it, but there was one man who
+did, and there we have the second flare of genius to be
+credited to Mussolini. He had become gradually conscious
+through constant contact with the working class, and the
+middle class as well, that they would never be fit for
+political life unless they acquired what they lacked through
+sacrifice. The recent Red Week had shown him that they
+would not fight, that they might set traps for other
+people’s lives, but they would not face either blows or
+death for anything; 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 ideas.</p>
+
+<p>It is, in fact, this national conscience, this spiritual and,
+therefore, unlimited gift that the war has bestowed upon
+Italy, and it is only now that Carducci, the most typically
+civic of all Italian poets, could write with perfect truth:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“Ei dipinga il trionfo dell ’Italia</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Assorta novella tra le genti.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless it is not Fascist Italy, it is not the real friends
+of Italy, who will ever find fault with the ideas that
+brought Italy to join the Allies and face the tragic ordeal
+of war. For it was the war, the mystery of death faced by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>millions of her sons, which has made Italy a moral value,
+and a first-rate historical factor in the present political
+world. The select minority that was the brain and soul
+of the Risorgimento has disappeared; national consciousness
+now fills the individual consciences of the
+majority, and this extension of the national conscience
+had nothing to do with the extended vote; it is a consequence
+of the war. Personality, national personality
+means actual unity of conscience and will just as much as
+individual personality. Such personality has effectively
+been born in Italy out of the ordeal that meant direct or
+indirect sacrifice from every man and woman, for nobody
+would doubt the reality of the object for which
+his sacrifice was made. Italy and her star were, up to
+1915, a good theme for popular or academic literature,
+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 reality. Hence the
+religiousness of their new realisation of Italy.</p>
+
+<p>It loomed indeed awful, like an obscure divinity, when it
+called men who did not quite know why they had to fight
+to the supreme sacrifice. One has to keep in mind how
+little civilisation and barbarity, pompous words, meant
+to the Italian lower class, and how little Sicilians or Neapolitans
+cared for Trento and Trieste. After Caporetto it
+was a different matter. The traditional foe was on their
+land, and by then they had realised what war meant.
+Therefore, one may say that their national soul was tempered
+between Caporetto and the Armistice, and that only
+then they became an ethical value, a spiritual entity or
+rather personality fit to play a part in the constructive
+history of the world. The point cannot be over-stated.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span></p>
+
+<p>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 men, ceasing thereby to be the
+monopoly of a small intellectual and aristocratic minority.</p>
+
+<p>The subjects of the King of Italy all became Italian
+citizens, and the people was finally one in its full independence;
+it was, indeed, the last act of the Risorgimento.</p>
+
+<p>Few foreigners, no foreigner so to speak, had in 1915
+a fair idea of what was the state of mind of the Italians
+and still less of what could be their mentality. 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 give, or has
+actually given, with the consequent mutual vexations that
+were to strain the relations between the Allies and Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The author had already, in 1915, spent two years in
+Italy and studied a good deal; 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 experience,
+observation and study. 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 campaign. On the other hand, they overlooked
+the possibilities of a people who had in front of itself the
+whole of its national future, an historical mentality which
+was likely to keep it from the sterilising conception of
+positivism, abstract idealism or materialism, once it
+should have reached a clear sense of its own secular
+reality, a Lacedemonian frugality, and finally intellectual
+forces not inferior to those of the Kantian and Hegelian
+Germany. The Italians for their part had to overcome a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>radical scepticism. They had a very poor opinion of what
+military achievement they could get out of their lower
+class, their traditional financial deficiency made them
+fear economic destruction almost more than the life
+sacrifice of so many men. Munitions were a nightmare,
+renewal of their coal and wheat stocks a puzzling problem.
+They had to trust blindly to the Allies. In fact it is a
+wonder that they should have overcome the sense of
+despondency that might have paralysed them altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it happened that the Italians did actually achieve
+far more than they expected, far surpassing their own
+opinion of their military efficiency; whilst doing far less
+than the Allies had expected. Hence no end of misunderstandings.
+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 power. Before the war they thought too
+little of themselves, because, as we have said, they were
+still nationally unconscious, 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 conscious. Such
+misunderstanding was to breed all the difficulties that we
+knew of at the end of the war. The Italians had been
+victorious in war, they had triumphed over their enemies,
+and above all over themselves, since they had asserted
+their reality as an actual political value. But they were
+defeated in peace, or at least were on the very point of
+being defeated and destroyed by peace.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The several Treaties of peace, the conferences of the
+Allies, were a long sequence of disappointments to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>people of Italy. 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 flourished. 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 <i>Popolari</i>—a
+kind of Social Catholic party that in theory was to
+take the place of the clericals. Whether their leader, Don
+Sturzo, a man of remarkable power, realised the sacrilegiousness
+of using Catholic priests to pervert the minds of
+the peasants or not, the Popolari brought their violences
+to such a pitch in some provinces that they not only
+matched, they surpassed the Reds.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_4_4" href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Naturally, these
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>parties and the men who were not supposed to belong to
+them, but were flattering them in case of an eventual
+revolution, 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 difficulties. To them, the only
+consequence of the war was the destruction of what had
+been laboriously done between 1870 and 1915.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this juncture that some people banded together
+their aspirations, which seemed in the main to be the
+realisation in the Adriatic of all the value of what they
+called “their mutilated victory.” They had mostly been
+in the trenches, and they clustered round Gabriele
+d’Annunzio who led them to occupy Fiume, which was
+still under the control of the Allies. The Allies left the
+whole affair to Italy and had the Italian government, or
+a strong party, backed d’Annunzio and his friends, the
+course of events would have been different. The country
+wanted Fiume, certainly, but with what will did they
+want it? With a will that was national at last, because
+it was not moved exclusively by Irredentism, and did not
+identify itself with the will of the upper classes, but was a
+feeling with the whole people. They had deserved it; they
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>were conscious of a right acquired through the common
+trial of the whole nation. It was, however, more a velleity
+than a will. The new spiritual life was quivering, it could
+express itself in a puerile gesture of the hand towards the
+object of its passion, but it could not yet express itself
+in action. Will or velleity—it was certainly the first
+manifestation of a really national life striving against the
+paralysing scaffolding of its political organisation. The
+professional politicians had been trained when politics were
+merely a question of technical detail, when to be a Deputy
+meant merely a job as a bargainer, 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 electors, 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 ministers.</p>
+
+<p>On the 28th of September, 1919, the government appointed
+General Badoglio Extraordinary Commissioner
+of the Venezia Guilia and accepted a discussion on the
+matter in the Chamber. Neither the men in power nor the
+opposition felt it possible to accept the suggestions of the
+Press, of various associations, and even of their friends who
+were urging the necessity of Fiume’s annexation. The
+Ministry gave in its resignation after dissolving the House
+and the elections returned 157 Socialists, among whom
+were moderate men like Turati and Treves and many new
+men whose programmes were openly revolutionary, and
+over a hundred <i>Popolari</i>. These parties had a good deal in
+common. 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 action. They were not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>dreamers and even in their worst or best ideals they were
+for definiteness of means and purpose. 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 centuries.</p>
+
+<p>The Nationalists had been returned in very small
+number, but were mostly young, with considerable intellectual
+culture, fit and ready to assume responsibilities.
+They had all done active service in the war and were
+sorry to see its meagre result. They required an audacious
+and strong policy without being able, however, to see
+clearly how this was to be realised. 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 party;
+they even called themselves different names and had no
+common programme.</p>
+
+<p>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 conscience.
+One must have spent those years in Italy, have
+actually lived the life of the Italians, felt all their actual experiences
+and at the same time have had a good historical and
+intellectual grounding in all that concerns the country, to
+understand fully the tragedy of it. They seemed to precipitate
+themselves from the soaring heights of national
+conscience to the lowest and vilest egotism. Material
+well-being was again the order of the day and not yours
+or theirs or the children’s, but <i>mine</i>. Beyond that nothing.
+Reality was again atomistic and the atoms constitutive
+of it were absolutely irrelatives. Nobody seemed to
+reflect; all were acting and behaving like children.
+Truly it is the subjectiveness of the period that must be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>taken as its characteristic. They seemed to move each
+in his own world. Even financially they seemed to have
+reached an unbridled licence. The constant principles
+that regulate economic relations which form the basis of
+society were disregarded. Objective reality was ignored
+just as it is ignored by children and to a certain degree
+by artists. 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
+subjectiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Consider the factories. It is evidently a high rate of
+production that will ensure the interests of both labour
+and capital. Well, the workmen, or women, set themselves
+to get higher wages as they have done in most countries,
+but in the north and centre of Italy they did it with such
+a childish and, therefore, savage and lawless will that the
+works had to be shut in many instances and were not
+reopened until the advent of Fascism. So that it can be
+said that by not taking into consideration the actual
+production as a whole, and the owner’s interest, they
+reduced their legitimate desire for a better life to the destructive
+whims of children and ruined their own interest.</p>
+
+<p>The schools reflected the same destructive state of mind.
+That which makes the school is surely not the building;
+the children are not pupils if they do not learn, and neither
+is the master a teacher except inasmuch as he does actually
+teach. Discipline having slackened to such a degree that
+it bordered on anarchy the pupils had one fixed idea
+to do no work, and a great many of the teachers—not all
+indeed, for the teaching body has always counted in
+Italy a number of first-rate men—had the same purpose.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>Teaching and learning were reduced to a ghostly shadow
+by the reduction of schools to a subjective purpose by
+both parties. 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 them.</p>
+
+<p>Such a false vision of life is certainly not natural to the
+Italian people, and it had taken a great deal of trouble
+to introduce it in a country the mentality of which is above
+all realistic. It is natural to think that the Socialist and
+Popolari leaders were guilty of the most criminal falsehoods.</p>
+
+<p>On the 15th of June, 1920, when Giolitti was called
+upon to form a new ministry, the government of Nitti had
+wrought such havoc in the few months he had been in
+power that the old statesman was hailed <i>Salvatore della
+Patria</i> on his coming to power by the very people who had
+called him a traitor five years before. Yet the new government
+found that the best thing to do was to let things
+go on as they were, with the result that factories were
+taken possession of by workmen, and a strong reaction
+took shape under the wings of the new-born Fascism,
+which came out with the simple programme of restoring
+order <i>even against the state</i> if it was necessary.</p>
+
+<p>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 Giolitti, who had truly
+never been a Nationalist, to compel d’Annunzio and his
+men to evacuate Fiume without any protest against the
+bombardment inflicted upon them. When, in the next
+spring, the elections took place, all the old parties were
+there again with the addition of Fascism. The men of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>new party were mostly new to politics altogether, whilst
+some came from all the old parties (including the Socialist)
+and they had all of them taken an active part in the war.
+In the districts they had made national blocks with
+Nationalists and Liberals and the few seats they obtained
+were not lost by the <i>Popolari</i> or Socialists, who were returned
+in the same proportion as they had been in the
+last House.</p>
+
+<p>The first characteristic of the Fascists was that they
+seemed to have the same programme as the Nationalists,
+whilst they were displaying the power of mass organisation
+that had been till then the privilege of Socialists and
+<i>Popolari</i>. (This characteristic holds good up to now.)
+They wanted to realise the political programme of the
+best men of Italy by lifting the working class up to it.
+As to their aim it was then exclusively the political and
+moral realisation of the practical and spiritual value they
+ascribed to the war victory. They had nothing like an
+abstract programme. 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 harmony, and their consequences all for the best; but
+the trouble begins as soon as their application is sought.</p>
+
+<p>Fascism has no ideologies but a cogent system of ideas
+able to give what ideologies will never give, promptitude
+and coherence of action. These ideas serve as a criterion
+of action rather than a theory. 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
+reality. The method it enforces of looking invariably at
+both the terms of any one relation is practical, as only can
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>be a method the axle of which is a highly philosophical
+conception. For the divorce between thought and action
+pronounced by the philosophy of the sixteenth, seventeenth,
+and eighteenth centuries might induce us to believe
+that speculative thoughts had nothing to do with everyday
+life, whereas the simplest and humblest action or relation
+to be productive has to be the direct and immediate expression
+of a thought, scientific or speculative. The peasant
+who lifts his axe over his head before striking it into
+the wood is not making a choreographic flourish with his
+tool; 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 wood. He certainly
+does not think of the force of gravitation, but he acts
+upon it. In the first contract, tacit though it may have
+been, the man who lacked hands to plough his fields and
+the men who had no field to plough, 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 ages. 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 parties, and the greater product of the harvest is
+the common aim. But when analytic methods, either empirical
+or rational, prevail in philosophy, practical life is infected
+with a ferocious individualism, the necessary
+consequence of which is the unjust attribution of the
+harvest to one of the two terms, to the ruin of the relation
+which has to be bilateral if it is to be at all.</p>
+
+<p>This concrete way of looking upon every economic and
+social problem does not indeed present itself as a miraculous
+way of removing the class struggles, which are, after
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>all, one of the main forces at play in the civilising process
+of mankind. 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 achieved.</p>
+
+<p>After all that has been said it is surely unnecessary to
+point out the absurdity of considering Fascism as a reactionary
+tendency. It goes indeed steadily forward and
+its leader would not have the historical mind he has, if
+it meant to reject the labourers’ claim to preserve the
+recognition of their interests, which is the one noble
+conquest of socialism. The “reaction” was never against
+the working classes’ rights; it was against all rights that
+did not spring from duties. It was against exclusive
+power—tyrannical as all exclusive powers are bound to
+be—that it reacted with the full consent of the population,
+as sick of being bossed by a mob minority as the mob had
+been to be bossed by the gentry fifty years before. Truly
+it would be a strange illusion of the upper classes if they
+were to believe that Fascism had come to restore “the
+good old times”; for that which it has come to restore
+or rather to establish is the really Christian equality of
+men. Christian because it intends rights to be consonant
+with spiritual value and actual recognition of duties.</p>
+
+<p>The revolutions of the past were always justified by
+the necessity of enforcing the claims of a single class.
+Fascism in its synthetic view of life strives to enforce
+the rightful claims of all classes, and considers them
+rightful as far as they present rights and duties on the
+same plane. If it looks to the past it is to understand the
+present, but its knowledge and understanding of history
+do not allow it to believe that history proceeds backwards.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span></p>
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Part_II">
+    <span class="smcap">Part II</span>
+    <br>
+    PHILOSOPHICAL ANTECEDENTS OF FASCISM
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I_1">
+    CHAPTER I
+    <br>
+    INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHICAL ANTECEDENTS
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Fascism is the concrete way of considering any organisation
+or relation in the light of the aim for which it was
+created. Such a method sweeps away a good deal of
+claptrap rhetoric and a great many prejudices. What
+matters is the actual working of an organisation towards
+its aim, and not at all the exclusive interest of one of the
+two contracting parties. Obviously this is the practical
+application of one of the most famous propositions of the
+philosophy of Mind. It is just as obvious that after a
+first period of political system exclusively for gentlemen
+and by gentlemen, and a second period of a political
+system exclusively drawn for the benefit of the lower class,
+it was natural that any sane party should have tried a
+synthetic policy, above all in a country where the mentality
+is essentially realist.</p>
+
+<p>The motto of Fascism is order and hierarchy. This
+is the necessary consequence of its taking into consideration
+always the aim and its actual realisation. 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 efficiency.
+Yet this notion of discipline is a trifle more modern than
+it sounds, at least in Italy. Nothing can better illustrate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>it than the example of a football Captain and his men.
+The boy who acts as Captain, let us say John Smith, has
+no authority over his fellows, except when, ceasing to be
+John Smith, he is Captain of the team, and while they are
+actually playing, practising or arranging a game. His
+authority is not personal, it is actual to the sport interests
+of the team, or the school they represent, so that it is not
+demeaning to any of his team to accept the dictates of his
+authority. Indeed the boys’ commonsense is strong
+enough, in England at least, to make them realise an idea
+which they would comprehend with great difficulty in its
+speculative form. To them it is obvious that their Captain’s
+authority is as absolute as it is actual and impersonal.
+He is Captain as long as he is an actual value, as long as
+he is a factor of efficiency to the general play of his side.
+His authority does not diminish one whit of the players’
+liberty, because the will of every single player is that his
+side should win, and such identity is that which makes
+the actual reality both of the team as an individual, or
+rather as a person, in the world of sport and of the single
+players as members of that team. The Captain is entrusted
+with the co-ordination of a number of wills, and their
+welding into one in his own person, so that each boy freely
+wants what all want. 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 wills.</p>
+
+<p>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 works, the notion of liberty taken as actual
+identification of each single will which is liberty with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>common will which is law. Again the boys’ commonsense
+would find it as ridiculous to argue over their Captain’s
+orders when playing, as to go on considering him as their
+superior when the game is over, or when they have detected
+among themselves a better Captain. Thereby they
+teach the world a deep truth, that is to say that no value
+can be considered as static, and that its realisation being
+dynamic and actual it cannot be achieved once for all, but
+is a continuous process of developing one’s own efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the notion of discipline and liberty acted upon
+by boys playing football results in a conception of hierarchy
+which is also shared by Fascism, and is pregnant
+with so much social and political reformation that one
+cannot insist too much upon it. Nor can one abstract it
+from Gentile’s system, of which it is theoretically and
+practically the centre. 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
+final, that is to say as perfect. To their young minds, full
+of freshness and elasticity, it would sound absurd not to
+be able to alter their arrangements and to modify their
+play in the best interests of the team. 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 diminished. But with this new view of hierarchy
+which Fascism takes as being grounded on actual value,
+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 end.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span></p>
+
+<p>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 “national” philosophies,
+philosophy being the historical process of infinite Mind;
+secondly, that as a consequence of the oneness of such
+a process, 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
+politics. Neither is there any such thing as an international
+system, and this ought to be sufficient to destroy any hope
+of internationalisation of mankind. Every great nation
+is a contributor to the life of Mind, and may be said to
+take in international politics a part which is proportioned
+to its theoretical contribution. Each school of thought
+takes the problems in the solution of which it displays the
+peculiarities which distinguish its genius from another
+school, either when this has given to it all the development
+of which its own genius was capable, or when it is
+developing it on unilateral lines.</p>
+
+<p>In philosophy good examples of this are the obvious
+derivation of Bacon’s and Descartes’ problems from the
+Italian philosophers of the Renaissance, and the mutual
+influence of English empiricism and French rationalism; in
+politics the influence of England on France during the whole
+of the eighteenth century and of both countries on Italy
+during the nineteenth century. Looking at any history of
+philosophy or politics serves to illustrate the point. For
+one follows the living process through which theoretical
+notions are born one out of the other, and one realises
+the part played by the characteristics of each nation in the
+constructive play of historical forces. There could be no
+stronger evidence both of the intellectual interdependence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>of countries, and the absolute necessity of their political
+independence.</p>
+
+<p>The relation of theoretical and practical life ought no
+longer to be one of exclusive opposition. Pragmatism has
+done something towards the simplification of it and the
+oncoming idealism is achieving it in a way that may be
+said radical. In the history of the last three centuries,
+however, we see philosophy considering thought and action
+as the two terms of an irreducible dualism; yet such
+dualism must not be considered a product of the perverseness
+of modern thought. Ovid has left us a verse which
+settles the point even for people unfamiliar with pagan
+philosophy. It is only the deliberate application of a given
+system which may follow after its conception, 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 expression.
+A good illustration of the point can be had from Germany.
+Lévy Bruhl has sketched the parallel development of
+German philosophy and national consciousness in a work
+which is not as famous as it deserves. After Hegel’s
+death, when his system has given birth to its two political
+offsprings, the statolatry of Imperialism and the myth
+of Marx’s Communism, 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
+fanaticism, which is as blinding as the religious fanaticism
+that appears in the history of all churches when, having
+exhausted the force of expansion that is dependent on the
+immediacy of their faith, they want to go on expanding
+artificially through arbitrary force.</p>
+
+<p>Few legacies of the first centuries of modern thought
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>have been as harmful as the divorce between the two
+manifestations of human activity. It was, however,
+inevitable. Faith in the positive teaching of the Church
+was the first snare into which early thinkers fell; for it is
+not exact to say that they professed the existence of two
+truths merely to escape danger. They firmly believed it.
+Most of them were good Catholics, and as sure in their
+scientific maturity as in the days of their childhood that
+the Church was right. On the other hand they were sure
+of the result of their observations and experiments. They
+were sure in both cases, and so they simply inferred the
+co-existence of two truths. Nowadays, it sounds childish
+and the reciprocal limitation of the two truths would be
+obvious to any modern student, but in those days the
+problem had not received the light that it has received
+since; and they were perfectly in earnest. The philosophers
+followed suit for two obvious reasons; science was
+still for a very long time identified with philosophy, and
+the sixteenth century thinkers, when they were faced by
+the dilemma of being heretics or of discarding their
+passionate researches, took to considering religion as
+belonging to the practical manifestation of mind whilst
+scientific and philosophic researches were its theoretical
+activity. One more step and religion was to be identified
+as the enemy of science.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>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
+epoch, which was dark and obscure to them merely because
+they knew very little about it—intellectual life was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>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 age. Scholasticism
+having patronised Aristotle as “The Philosopher,” Plato
+was for the first time opposed to him, then Neo-platonism;
+then modern “national” schools of thought arose at the
+breaking up of the intellectual world. For a United
+Intellectual States of Europe existed during the Middle
+Ages; and the biographies of St. Anselm and St. Thomas
+tell us eloquently how, in their centuries, a man could
+pass from country to country to follow his studies with
+the greatest simplicity. At the time of St. Anselm,
+nationality could not be traced in a man’s works. By
+the time Roger Bacon wrote the differences had developed,
+and it is not impossible to find his character as a
+sturdy Briton standing out distinctly in his works. Such
+national tendencies expressed themselves only in matters
+of little moment, 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 others;
+it is none the less obvious that there were essential differences
+between the character it gradually assumed in
+various countries, a character and an attitude that may
+be identified as the initial stage of the various European
+mentalities.</p>
+
+<p>The best proof of this is to be had in the essential and
+irreducible differences manifest in the conclusions to
+which Italian, English and French philosophy came on the
+very same problem, which they found on the threshold of
+modern civilisation. Giordano Bruno, Francis Bacon and
+René Descartes treated the same question when their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>respective countries emerged from the later Middle Ages
+with their respective schools coming to light from scholasticism
+through humanism. The problem of knowledge
+faced them in this dawn of modern intellectual life; and
+the same passionate reaction against Aristotelianism
+and scholasticism compelled their researches to take the
+same bent. Yet they came to widely different conclusions
+and the differences hold good even to-day as characteristic
+of Italian, English and French mentalities.</p>
+
+<p>Bruno, whose metaphysic is wonderfully synthetic and
+pregnant with a lyricism the echo of which runs through
+the work of Vico, faces the problem of truth, of
+scientific truth according to him, in order to find
+theoretical ground to reject the authority of antiquity
+considered by his forerunners as the well of all
+worldly wisdom. A conception known to that same
+antiquity but very uncommonly acted upon takes hold
+of his mind. Truly old age must be wiser than youth, but
+antiquity is, compared to his age, the nursery age of mankind,
+and a fairly good student of the sixteenth century
+knows far more than Aristotle, because he may know, if
+he chooses, all that Aristotle knew, and all that has come
+afterwards to the knowledge of men. Each generation
+brings its stone to the constructive activity of man’s
+experience. Hence the idea he expressed <i>veritas filia
+temporis</i>. Thus he proclaims that which will be the motto
+of every true Italian thinker; reality is essentially and
+above all, Historical Reality.</p>
+
+<p>In England, Bacon, starting on the same errand,
+through his researches, 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
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>of science, and that servile veneration for Aristotle is,
+above all, to be condemned as paralysing the initiative
+of modern thinkers. Learning is not to be considered as
+the work of antiquity, as a work already done; 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 syllogism. Man must
+trust to his personal experience, the immediate experience
+of his senses. Nothing could be more anti-historical in
+its consequences than this assertion, the unilateralness
+of which would be astonishing from a man who felt the
+whole of historical and social world as a pulsing reality,
+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 wrote. He could not very well be expected to see the
+condition of his own experience in the experience of his
+forerunners, in the age in which self-assertion was the
+successful motto of every great man flourishing in England.
+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
+days. Yet henceforth reality in the eyes of any true
+Briton was to be <i>Empirical Reality</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A French thinker faces the same problem. René
+Descartes at first sight is everything that Bacon is not;
+whilst the English philosopher is a mixture of recklessness
+and worldly wisdom, anxious to enjoy everything that
+power and wealth can beget, and drink to the dregs the
+cup of life, the French metaphysician recoils from the cares
+of power and the noisy turmoil of society. A longer consideration,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>specially from a more philosophic point of view,
+reveals affinities that were going to tell on their theories.
+Both lack the youthful enthusiasm common to German
+and Italian thinkers, and both give shape to their theories
+with a cautious prudence that marks them as men of the
+world. Their conclusions betray their divergencies and
+affinities much better than any analysis of their life and
+character could; for Descartes certitude is reached by
+way of induction when in the silence of meditation he
+comes to his famous statement <i>Cogito, ergo sum</i>. The
+touchstone of certitude is identified with the actual
+consciousness of man in the act of thinking. If I think
+surely I am; but of the rest, that is to say of the knowledge
+of the exterior world I have no control, and traditional
+science is communicated to me and was originally
+obtained through the senses just as my actual objective
+knowledge, therefore it cannot be accepted as certain.
+Aristotle and all the traditional fetishism come to nought.
+The <i>tabula rasa</i> is implied as definitely in this as in Bacon’s
+work; in both cases man must begin his work from the
+foundation and put to the test of his own experience,
+empirical in one case, rational in the other, the legacies
+of his predecessors. 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 theories, will always be susceptible of being
+tempered by a direct call to experience and commonsense.
+The rationality of French philosophy does not allow of
+such adaptation. 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 principle;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>hence the radicalness that mars some of their practical
+application. With the exception of men greatly influenced
+by foreign philosophy, the French thinkers all took reality
+as being Rational Reality; and all their systems were
+bound to be radical in their applications.</p>
+
+<p>In their rationalism or empiricism, France and England
+threw overboard the past that loomed indeed rather
+oppressive, and in so doing they assert man, in his individual
+determination, as the ground of all reality. It is
+perfectly allowable to consider that the two schools were
+bound to stimulate and temper each other. The atom, the
+monad at the basis of their system is always man, but
+at the outset the unilateralism of Bacon’s gnoseology, a
+method based so to speak exclusively on sense knowledge,
+called for the mathematical and deductive method of
+Descartes in order to display all that it held virtually of
+scientific progress. On the other hand the French deductive
+method, although admitting the inference and
+resorting to it in its research of first principles, stood in sore
+need of a well-balanced recognition of the part played by
+sense perception in human knowledge. This will be
+specially obvious in the political consequences of the two
+theories. For both had their political system, in which
+their common character prevailed, inasmuch as the seventeenth
+century was for France and England the century
+of metaphysics whilst the eighteenth drew the conclusions
+of their premises, seeing to the application or realisation of
+all that was fertile as a suggestion of a renovating process
+to be undergone by society.</p>
+
+<p>Bruno’s historical reality was left in a corner, for it
+could not have been integrated in our system to which it
+was then contradictory, and still less in the political conditions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>that were to be the outcome of our theories, since
+it was consonant with them only as far as the individual
+was the basis of his reality as well as of ours. His individual
+is, however, neither rational, nor empirical; he is
+historical, and this implies that he cannot be considered
+bereft either of his roots in the past nor of his projection
+on the future. Nothing therein tends to diminish man;
+on the contrary everything adheres to him, dilating his
+personality right into infinity. But this notion of man
+was far too difficult to be realised even theoretically in
+the sixteenth century, 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 detected,
+and the historical notion of man realised in the light of such
+a conception. In Bruno it is not, however, a mere intuition
+although it is realised only as far as the conception of
+science and its historical development are concerned.
+The practical realisation of this notion implied a new conception
+of tradition and authority, which, far from being
+shaken to pieces, are in it invested with a new and nearly
+sacred character. Antithetic thereby to Protestantism,
+it knocked no less against the transcendent reality of God
+as understood then by decadent scholasticism and by
+most Catholics.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II_1">
+    CHAPTER II
+    <br>
+    HUMANISM AND RENAISSANCE SHAPING THE HISTORICAL MIND OF ITALY
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The spirit of Humanism—the veneration for antiquity
+which animated it—was quite obviously different in
+Italy from what it was elsewhere. That the difference
+consisted in the closer affinity of the scholars to the world
+they studied is obvious also. No greater proof is needed
+than the difference between the architecture of the
+twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Western
+Europe and in Italy. Art, as conceived by modern
+æsthetics, is that degree of mind, the function of which is
+neither theoretical nor practical, but consists in expressing
+through intuition the whole life of the mind. We can,
+therefore, rightly appeal to art as the most faithful witness
+to the spirit that animates an epoch. Ample documents
+illustrating the difference between the spirit of Humanism
+in France and in Italy can be found in the works of Emile
+Mâle on the Gothic art of France, and in any illustrated
+book of Italian mediæval Art, such as the small but excellent
+album of Ojetti.</p>
+
+<p>Romanic architecture flourished in both countries between
+the eighth and twelfth centuries, and its monuments
+in France, such as St. Sernin of Toulouse, leave no
+doubt as to the debt of the country to its Roman conquerors.
+Even at that time, when the South of France
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>had not yet altogether lost its traditions as the Roman
+Province, we can see new tendencies at work. In Italy, the
+contemporary buildings, pieced together with fragments
+of ancient columns, capitals, architraves, employed as
+simple building material, point to the more intimate co-existence
+in Italy of the old and new elements. It is
+sufficient to recall two churches of the ninth century in
+Rome, St. Maria <i>in Domnica</i> and St. Prassede, both
+following the model of the great Constantinian Basilicas.
+While their architecture is inspired by the classic age of
+Christian art, and the materials are stolen from Pagan
+monuments, their mosaics evince a healthy realism that
+asserts the living tradition of local art, despite the obvious
+and predominant influence of the East. But this persistence
+of Roman influences does not exclude those of
+the North; Carolingian art greatly influenced Italy,
+especially in certain forms of decorative work. The golden
+altar of St. Ambrogio in Milan, the canopy above it, and
+some of the stuccoes at Cividale, prove the force of these
+influences in districts ethnically and historically favourable
+to their reception.</p>
+
+<p>By the eleventh century feudal society had either lost
+or assimilated the pre-Christian elements, legacy of the
+ancient world, which at first had cemented together the
+various racial tendencies extant in Europe at the close of
+the Roman Empire, thereby preparing the way for new
+thoughts and ways of living. The Northern world had
+fully realised a new social order, developing a new spiritual
+life and consequently a new art to express it. Although this
+art contains numerous and important classical and
+Eastern elements its originality is manifest. We are confronted
+with a new world with its own idealistic and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>naturalistic tendencies. The boldness of the architecture,
+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 thought. Mâle has
+clearly shown how the artists have drawn upon all the
+theology, the philosophy and the literature of the age to
+express at the same time both the highest spiritual and
+the plainest practical life.</p>
+
+<p>Italian architecture of the same period, following more
+faithfully the old tradition, stands in great contrast to
+this originality. St. Ambrogio in Milan is an excellent
+example of this traditional growth of Italian art in the
+days that witnessed the full development of communal
+liberty. Very different from the Constantinian Basilica,
+even as the Commune was not the exact counterpart of
+the Roman <i>Municipium</i>, its heavy structure, so eloquent
+in its massiveness, must have appealed to its middle-class
+builders. In other Lombard churches we meet with the
+same attempt to create a new style with classical elements.
+In seeking to harmonise traditional disposition with the
+new needs, they tried to avoid the extreme novelties of
+the North, too alien to the Roman well-balanced and
+unlyrical mentality. The style of such buildings is present
+to every mind and reveals better than any description the
+unbroken descent from Imperial Rome. Indeed, from
+Lombardy to Sicily, from Venice to Genoa, various are
+the styles flourishing in the Peninsula; yet it is easy to
+detect everywhere strong traces of such descent. The
+Baptistery of Florence is a very good instance of this
+traditionalism and recalls faithfully that of the Lateran
+of the time of Constantine. In entering San Miniato in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>Florence, where the fanciful details of the decoration
+follow and are subordinate to the severely classical
+architecture, we almost feel on the threshold of the
+Renaissance, although still in the eleventh century. In
+the monuments of Pisa, Lucca and Pistoia we find the
+same classical qualities in the architectural scheme, united
+to the more poetic fancies displayed in the decoration.
+There is thus a conscious dependence on antiquity in the
+main architectural features, together with the utmost
+readiness to accept foreign accessories. St. Mark’s in
+Venice displays, even as the history of the amphibious
+Republic, all the sumptuousness of the East, but even in
+such an exotic scheme the architecture still relies on
+Imperial Rome, which had itself absorbed many Eastern
+elements. Torcello, Trieste, Murano, show as clearly as
+the Lombard communes the slow process of evolution
+that was to lead to the Renaissance. Byzantine elements
+are not as alien as Gothic to Roman tradition. The contemporary
+jurists had shown the great contribution of
+Byzantium to the development of Roman law, and
+Byzantine motives were assimilated more easily than
+those from the North.</p>
+
+<p>The Roman legions had brought the great expanses of
+the North into the orbit of history, but though they left
+deep and undying traces behind them, they were unable
+to destroy the virile qualities of the Northern races.
+So when Christianity brought a new intuition of life to
+the Western world it developed locally according to the
+tendencies of the various nations. 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 it, among peoples who “<i>a cultu atque
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>humanitate provinciae longissime absunt</i>.” Even though
+their growth was to be slower in some respects, such as
+the cultural, such peoples were bound to absorb more
+completely the full import of the new faith and thus produce
+a thoroughly original civilisation. It was, therefore,
+necessary in order to glorify the new religion to produce
+an art as novel as the civilisation which inspired it. In
+contrast to this affirmation of an entirely new mentality
+Italy was influenced by the Roman traditions that weighed
+upon her; they stimulated a premature efflorescence that
+exhausted her virility for centuries. Her people were not
+forced to elaborate afresh all the elements of life; the
+Church had preserved for them the framework of Roman
+life and law. Thus the energy expanded in France and in
+England in working out a radically new society and civilisation,
+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
+past.</p>
+
+<p>In all the struggles from the twelfth to the fifteenth
+century with the Empire and with the Church, the Italians
+invariably appealed to the traditions of Ancient Rome;
+and their appeal was not to a remote civilisation, but to a
+living tradition of their own, opposed to the feudal
+institutions of the barbarians. At the time of the Communes
+this attitude is particularly striking. The peasantry
+had taken shelter from feudal oppression in towns protected
+by the authority of a bishop, and there with the
+developments of commerce they grew in wealth and
+political power. We thus find a new social class, the
+burgher, that contributed immensely to the growing
+importance of the cities. These strong practical men were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>distinguished by that common sense and pride that to-day
+distinguishes the sturdy and self-assertive Fascists.
+Having established their institutions, they considered them
+a living part of their own persons, and brought into
+political life their sense of personal dignity and the energy
+of the mediæval Christian, ready to die for the ideas
+represented by his Corporation, even as the Fascist is
+ready to die for his symbolic Black Shirt.</p>
+
+<p>The Communes, in spite of their novelty, perhaps indeed
+in consequence of the novelty of their self-assertion, were
+responsible for one of the strongest historical bonds with
+the past. For in their opposition to the feudal rights
+acknowledged by mediæval law, they appealed to Roman
+jurisprudence in order to prove the legal grounds of their
+liberties. They instinctively conformed to the past,
+creating forms of government rich in future possibilities,
+and such conformity was not, according to Professor
+Reggio, a mere question of high-sounding names. The
+Communes reproduced of the actual and essential features
+of the City-State, all those that could be revived.
+Their classicism was by no means artificial, it was intimately
+felt as the surest means of destroying feudalism, at
+that time the most assertive form of individualism. Even
+the present Fascist appeal to Rome is far from being mere
+rhetoric; Rome is considered the one force antagonistic
+to that anti-historical mentality due to illuminism, that
+has given rise to abstract demagogy and individualism.</p>
+
+<p>The burghers, backed by the recently liberated peasantry,
+formed the strength of the Commune, and upheld
+the memories of Roman municipal organisation against
+the prevalently Germanic nobility. The Government of
+the Communes consisted of a college of Rectors with an
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>Assembly of Elders, very much like the Senate of old, with
+various dependent <i>clientele</i> that recall the <i>gentes</i>; the
+heads of the various Guilds were called Consuls and took
+command of their men in any emergency. Their defence
+of civic liberties was essentially the defence of freedom
+to attend to their trades and occupations. Here again
+they anticipated Mussolini. What matters to the Commonweal
+is not the individual but the interest he represents.
+They considered that this freedom of work was incompatible
+with the dependence of the Commune on any
+superior temporal authority. This was so deeply felt
+that the city was placed under the protection of a Patron
+Saint, who, according to Ercole Reggio, was not unlike
+the eponymous Hero of an ancient city.</p>
+
+<p>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 Romans. Studies of Roman Law were pursued with as
+much zeal and vigour as any other form of practical or
+religious life. As long as Pisa, Milan, Cremona, Pavia,
+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 Law, as
+Professor Solmi has clearly pointed out, and in the art
+of Niccolò Pisano. Such Roman and classical qualities
+were to disappear when the towns lost their municipal
+autonomy, only to reappear at the present day in the
+idealism of Gentile, whose <i>Filosofia del Diritto</i> is as much
+impressed by the seal of their realism as it is influenced
+by the thought of Hegel. They reappear in the Reform
+of the Italian Constitution, tending to substitute actual
+interest as the dynamic basis of the State in the place of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>the static and naturalistic foundation it has had up till
+now. They reappear above all in Mussolini, who told the
+author he did not wish that a theoretical legislation should
+regulate or rather paralyse the development of the new
+corporations, but that, following the example of the
+Romans, he wished the legislation to grow out of the
+minutes of every single case submitted to the Corporation
+Court. Before they disappeared they had pervaded all
+Italian life to such a degree that scholars could say <i>we</i> in
+talking of the ancient Romans, and consider Latin as their
+own language. Ricordano Malespini says that Frederick II
+spoke “<i>la nostra lingua latina e il nostro volgare</i>.” They
+had two national languages, Latin and the vernacular,
+the latter itself a degenerate offspring of Latin, known as
+the “<i>romano rustico</i>,” to which could be traced all the
+various dialects in spite of their local corruptions. The
+Communes had also a great influence on the formation of
+the Italian language, and this influence tended to unification
+not to differentiation, as many historians have taken
+for granted in consequence of their political individualism.</p>
+
+<p>Francesco de Sanctis says that intellectual culture
+necessarily stimulates new ideas, far superior to the
+material necessities of man, and thereby calls into existence
+a more educated and refined class of citizens, putting
+it in communication with foreign intellectual life. The
+ultimate consequence is a closer connection of languages
+that develops not their local, but their common elements.
+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 vernacular. Thus we see
+how the classical revival started at the very moment
+when the new Italian consciousness should have been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>born. This revival was aided by the establishment of great
+international centres such as the Court of Palermo at
+first, and later the cities of Tuscany and Lombardy. As
+the studies of Latin improved, the local dialects became
+purer and more refined. The weakness of the contemporary
+writers for rhetoric, for verbosity, their exaggerated
+love for the mere word, to which they attributed an
+almost religious value, seems very often the naïve pleasure
+of reasserting a family claim on a cherished property.</p>
+
+<p>Both Guelphs and Ghibellines are followers of Rome,
+the former, as we have seen, finding in Roman Law the
+legality of their municipal institutions, the latter appealing
+to the traditions of Imperial Rome to justify the sovereign
+rights of Cæsar. The whole public life assumes a religious
+character as in all constructive periods of history and as is
+the case in Italy to-day, where the previous lack of seriousness
+has been considered by the greatest thinkers to have
+been the product of religious scepticism. At that time the
+object of the common veneration, the one universal feeling
+of the most factious of peoples in the most factious period
+of its history was the cult of Rome. And as Religion
+played such an immense part in their whole life, the
+Italians were obliged to christianise Rome and associate
+it with Christian idealism. For Dante, Christ, and Rome
+dominate the history of a thousand years. He views
+history as a vast moral and religious evolution, as an
+indissoluble whole, each portion of which converges
+irresistibly to its pre-ordained end. The Birth of Our Lord
+at the moment when Cæsar Augustus ordained that all
+the world should be taxed testified to God’s approval
+of the Empire. Christ, in submitting His Godhead to the
+judgment of a Roman magistrate, gave Divine sanction to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>Roman Law. Dante does not consider the miraculous
+origin of the Seven-Hilled City as the only proof of the
+privileges it holds from God, nor does he ascribe to it the
+more important favour of a special historical process.
+Rome for Dante is equivalent to Catholicity, to conformity
+to the plans of the Divine Providence, and the history of
+Rome raises the Roman State almost to Divine rank.
+Guelphs and Ghibellines find in the Roman Jurists and
+the Roman Legions arguments in support of their opposite
+claims, and when the advent of the <i>Signorie</i> involved them
+in a common downfall, the consciousness of an unbroken
+descent from Rome could never after be erased from
+Italian mentality.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of Rome on all the mediæval institutions
+of Italy is obvious to anyone familiar with the period.
+But the Italians, at the dawn of modern history, were led
+by this unbroken tradition of Rome into a habit of going
+to Roman history and law for a solution of contemporary
+problems, and this, while it secured their supremacy in the
+field of jurisprudence, kept their mentality from developing
+on original and modern lines. Even when Italy seemed
+almost to have withdrawn from all competition in theoretical
+research, her jurists and historians stood out to proclaim
+the immortality of the national genius. 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 idea, the dignity of man as a citizen.
+They overlooked the fact that such wonderful citizenship
+had never been bestowed on man as man, that the municipal
+liberties, the privileges of the <i>Collegia</i>, the rule over
+the barbarians, were the reward of the Romans, not the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>pre-ordained lot of Rome. Italian scholars felt with the
+deepest conviction that her genealogy alone endowed
+Italy with a primacy which they could not renounce.
+Even had they so wished they could not have been a
+modern nation in a modern world. The more they studied,
+the more did they convince themselves like Petrarch that
+they descended in an unbroken line from Marius and
+Sulla. Their historical mentality was already formed and
+they could not consider the human world otherwise than
+as a narrow collaboration of successive generations.</p>
+
+<p>Dante, in his preface to the <i>De Monarchia</i>, has stated his
+idea of this historical succession. “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 that, even as they themselves have been
+enriched by the labours of their ancestors, they may to the
+same degree endow their successors. Indeed, 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 Republic, not like unto ‘a tree
+by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his
+season,’ but rather unto a baneful whirlpool that swalloweth
+up all things nor ever restoreth what it hath once
+swallowed.” Here we find the empirical expression of
+what Giordano Bruno was to conceive theoretically three
+hundred years later, thus foreshadowing the Immanentist
+doctrine of history and society that Vico was to develop
+some hundred and fifty years later still. Vico had, in his
+turn, to wait until the second half of the nineteenth
+century in order to be properly understood. His ideas
+in 1916 formed the basis of Giovanni Gentile’s Philosophy
+of Law, and at the present day are realised in the Italian
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>Constitution as elaborated by the Government of Mussolini.
+But Dante’s scholastic training could not allow him
+to have the least inkling of the doctrine of Immanentism;
+his ideal Monarch is merely a magistrate appointed and
+endowed by God. For Dante all political power could only
+be lawfully derived from the Divine law. Scholastic
+philosophy could not conceive a law that should not be
+dependent upon a superior will or a pre-existing law.
+None the less, this empirical statement, such as it is, 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 society.</p>
+
+<p>The removal of the Papal court to Avignon gave Italy
+a rude shock in affecting the good fame of the whole
+country. The humiliation of the Papacy is resented all
+over the Peninsula, and the eclipse of the Papal dignity
+diminishes the prestige not only of Rome but of Italy. A
+new religion, the cult of Rome, spreads in all Italian
+hearts, and its ruined monuments are scarcely less venerated
+than the relics of the Apostles. The glorious memories
+of the Roman Republic, the pride of the Roman
+name, give rise both to the unfortunate statesmanship of
+Arnold of Brescia and, a hundred and fifty years later, to
+the rash adventure of Cola di Rienzo. All those who
+cannot boast such an illustrious descent are contemptuously
+designated as barbarians, and this distinction gives
+rise to the feeling of the unity of the Italian races. The
+mystical and religious fervour with which the men of the
+Risorgimento felt for Rome, so strong that it led them to
+trample on their religion, was not stronger than that of the
+first humanists. Petrarch and Boccaccio were already
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>preparing the way for the Renaissance, of which they are
+rightly considered as the first pioneers. These enthusiasts,
+who brought such inestimable benefits to the intellectual
+life of the whole world, nevertheless introduced into their
+own country the germ of many ills.</p>
+
+<p>The men of France and England could never feel at home
+in the ample folds of Cicero’s toga as the Italians did. It
+was for them, indeed, a useful garment worn with perfect
+ease of manners as a ceremonial robe donned on state
+occasions, or a protective covering unfurled in their
+intellectual battles. Despite its assimilation and survival
+as late as the eighteenth century in the ample periods of
+Dr. Johnson or in the well-balanced sentences of Bossuet,
+it did not modify to any degree the mentality of countries
+with which it did not have a close affinity, although it
+left in the minds a certain number of ideas distinctly
+pagan, such as that of birthright. French and English
+scholars looked upon Rome as something definitely outside
+their own world, like the moon or the sun, and just as
+illuminating to them as the former is to the night wanderer
+and the latter to all the labours of mankind. This transcendental
+quality rendered Rome indeed semi-divine in
+their eyes, but fortunately kept them from considering
+themselves the lineal progeny of Marius or Cæsar. Their
+cult of antiquity was just as profoundly religious as that
+of the Italian scholars with whom they were often in the
+closest relations, only their attitude was more detached.
+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 gifts. An
+abyss stood between them and antiquity; they were unable
+to appreciate their real connection with antiquity.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>Their historical information as to the intervening centuries
+could only be drawn from mediæval chronicles which, full
+of detail though they were, did not offer any comprehensive
+view even of a reign and much less of a century.
+They failed to understand the essential continuity of the
+history of all countries, and, while not making the mistake
+of considering the Romans as their ancestors, they could
+not conceive history and society as immanent in man.</p>
+
+<p>Petrarch, on the contrary, considers himself perfectly
+Roman, although his lyrics are almost the first assertion
+of modern individualism. His familiarity with Livy,
+Cicero, Virgil, gave him an appreciation of classical Latin
+that led him to consider that of Dante barbarous. What
+matters to him is the form in which thoughts are expressed,
+not the thoughts themselves; he wanted art
+for art’s sake. Fortunately, his genius and the fervour of
+his cult for Rome sometimes animates his consciousness
+of the continuity of the past with the present. In the
+<i>Canzone di Signori d’Italia</i> the new Italy that was trying
+to recover her Roman and Latin tradition appears as a
+fully grown personality. Guelphs and Ghibellines, Romans
+and Florentines have disappeared, and Italy speaks the
+proud language of the Queen of Civilisation. As Francesco
+De Sanctis puts it, the poet is an Italian, conscious of the
+superiority of his race. Marius is mentioned as if he were
+an almost contemporary person. So deeply does the young
+poet feel the classical world that henceforth he considers
+the heroes of Greece and Rome as his ancestors. With
+personal pride he assumes the military glories of Marius
+and Cæsar no less than the ample rhetoric of Cicero. And
+in this assumption of a ready-made glory as Italy’s inherent
+right, cause of much subsequent political and moral
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>weakness, we may find the first signs of the contribution
+that modern Italy is perhaps now on the verge of bringing
+to civilisation. It is therefore natural that Fascism should
+attack with energy the negative side of the legacy of
+Humanism, the Italian fondness for rhetoric, union of lofty
+words and mean deeds, while accepting and proclaiming
+the historical conception that links man to the generations
+past and future.</p>
+
+<p>The Italians of the fifteenth century continued to revel
+in the glory of Rome and gradually forgot that there was
+an actual and living reality, hardly consistent with their
+superior attitude as the sons of Cæsar and Augustus.
+Prose and verse improved so long as the cult of antiquity
+retained its initial mystic fervour, that provided the
+religious element indispensable to all creative art. But
+when devotion to classical studies became a question of
+interest or vanity, it was only from the very greatest
+artists, from men whose real religion was the worship of
+art, that one could expect sincerity. All the others were
+only extraordinarily adept at the clever wording of other
+people’s ideas. They could never fail to deck any subject,
+no matter how mean, no matter how repulsive, in the full
+pomp of a Ciceronian oration, rich in beautiful sentences
+and displaying the careful study of all the figures of speech
+to be found in the classics. Fraccastorius describes a
+loathsome disease in the finest of post-classical hexameters.
+Politicians could act as meanly as they pleased, sure that
+the glory of Rome would raise them above the rest of
+mankind. Even their real superiority in historical feeling
+and in the interpretation of antiquity was a source of
+weakness. For when beaten in war they could always
+express contempt for the victors and call them barbarians,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>consoling themselves with their real intellectual and
+artistic superiority for their political humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>In 1494 Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, meeting
+with no resistance worth mentioning. It is not surprising,
+since the despairing cry of Boiardo</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Mentre che io canto, O Dio Redentore.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Vedo l’Italia tutta a fiamma e a foco”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>is almost the swan-song of mediæval Italy. At the same
+time a twenty-year-old youth, destined to become the
+greatest poet of the age, Lodovico Ariosto, could sing
+with perfect Horatian art and with an equally perfect
+indifference for his country</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent18"><i>“asperi</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>furore militis tremendo</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Turribus ausoniis ruinam”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and with all the selfishness of unconscious indifference</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Rursus quid hostis prospiciat sibi</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Me nulla tangat cura, sub arbuto</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Iacentem aquae ad murmur cadentis.”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He has adopted the measures and harmonies of Horace
+and Virgil and, wrapped up in his pride in the glory of
+Rome, goes on singing his classical bucolic loves in complete
+indifference to the fate of his country:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Est mea nunc Glycerae, mea nunc est cura Lycoris,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Lyda modo meus est, est modo Phyllis amor.”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Reality is a horrible dream, “<i>improba seclis conditio!</i>” he
+is shocked that</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“nuper ab occiduis illatum gentibus, olim</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>pressa quibus nostro colla fuere iugo.”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span></p>
+
+<p>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 chivalry.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>The sixteenth century witnesses the final divorce of Italian
+culture from real life, so that for two subsequent centuries,
+instead of developing the moral and social qualities
+of the individual citizen, as in England, in France and in
+the Netherlands, it tended rather to the atrophy of all
+real patriotism. But at this very moment, in opposition
+to this dissolving and negative influence of Italian
+Humanism, one of the greatest men produced by a land
+ever “<i>magna parens virum</i>” stands forth to proclaim that
+man alone is the creator of the historical world and arbiter
+of his own destiny. The public life and the posthumous
+fame of the Florentine Secretary are equally unfortunate,
+but the present age is better prepared to appreciate the
+truths contained in the works of Niccolò Machiavelli.</p>
+
+<p>He, like all the intellectuals of the period, would have
+said “<i>we</i>” in speaking of the Romans, and he might
+have used the phrase of Leonardo Aretino, “<i>Graecos
+ΠΟΛΙΣ, NOSTROS CIVITAS appellavisse</i>,” had he
+desired to trace the etymology of that political reality so
+dear to his heart. But this identification was not sentimental;
+he analyses closely the differences between past
+glory and present shame. Strictly speaking, he is not a
+Humanist at all; like Galileo, he repudiates Neoplatonism
+and follows, rather, the experimental method. He carefully
+dissects the past for the benefit of the present, and
+deftly probes the wounds of the body politic. This
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>empirical standpoint indeed would be a grave defect, did
+not his genius and sense of history as a living reality often
+lead him to intuitions that transcend both his method and
+outlook. The intuitions, the proof of the truth of which
+was to be one of the chief conquests of modern thought,
+are clouded by his prejudices or obscured by the inevitable
+limitations of his knowledge of facts. His conception of
+“virtue” is perhaps the most characteristic of those
+intuitions that allowed him to foresee ideas only to be
+understood by the end of the nineteenth century, and
+only to be acted on by the present day.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the idea in itself was not entirely new. One
+of the ablest historians of the fifteenth century, Philippe
+Monnier, 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 man. 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 world. After two
+centuries of Humanism, noble birth is an absurdity. For
+Piccolomini, Ficino, Landino, man cannot be born noble,
+he can only become noble through his own exertions. The
+Stoic precept of the absolute autonomy of the human will
+is frequently alluded to in discussion on the power of
+Fortune, against which Leone Battista Alberti strenuously
+asserts the power of man to forge his own destiny. Alberti,
+typical representative of the Renaissance, in all his moral
+works, emphasises the freedom of man from all external
+influences and above all from the dominion of Chance, and
+for him man’s life is a consequence of man’s actions.
+Neither Fate nor Chance are a cause of the varying
+circumstances of individuals.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span></p>
+
+<p>Having these doctrines before him, Machiavelli was
+able to apply to the life of nations the ideas that governed
+the life of the individual. Rome had been powerful and
+glorious; Italy is weak and contemptible: the cause is
+the moral corruption of the Italians. Machiavelli does
+not always consider Italy’s invaders as barbarians; he
+is always ready to study their institutions and ways of
+living in order to discover the reasons for their military
+superiority. He firmly believes that Fortune can only
+display her power where no “virtue” has prepared a
+resistance. Italy, “<i>vituperio del mondo</i>,” will certainly
+return to her former strength could the Italians be aroused
+from their torpor. His attitude is identical with that of
+Mussolini’s government: Italy is slighted by the Allies,
+she is financially weak, the cause is the scepticism and self-indulgence
+of the people, the remedy a stricter conception
+of life for adults and a more religious education for children.
+Fortune, however, is not quite identified with Fate, and,
+while the latter is unhesitatingly rejected, the former is
+retained as a kind of background against which man can
+display more efficiently his will and “virtue.” This background,
+which he calls Fortune or Opportunity, is no less
+a conception than Croce’s “situation of facts.” His
+“verità effettuale delle cose” is the objective knowledge
+of the Crocian “situazione de fatto” and must be ascertained
+anew before embarking on any new action, for,
+according to the shrewd Florentine, “sono le cose umane
+sempre in moto.” It is, therefore, necessary to take one’s
+bearings before embarking on any course to realise
+one’s will. The best type of will is that which draws its
+strength from an intimate knowledge of actual circumstances
+and is consequently steady and resolute. Hence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>the profound morality of such will-power, pursuing its
+end without hesitation or incertitude, disdainful of half
+measures, its moral value immanent in the very act of
+volition.</p>
+
+<p>It is no longer possible to continue to identify Machiavelli
+with immorality or amorality, now that his doctrines
+have been profoundly analysed by philosophers, jurists,
+and critics of the value of Ercole, Croce or Gentile. We
+only find in his works a transposition of the fundamental
+principles of ethics. What he calls “virtue” is not to be
+understood in its Christian sense. It is closely allied to efficiency
+but is an efficiency displayed in the accomplishment
+of the common good, in the realisation of a strong State.
+Hunger and necessity can render men industrious but only
+wise laws can make them good. Indeed the laws bring
+people to realise the necessity of justice; social intercourse
+gives rise to all the various conditions of life, including education,
+religion, habit, law, and ultimately to the standard
+of goodness. As Gentile points out, for Machiavelli as for
+Spinoza the common good is a product of society; the
+distinction between good and evil presupposes society,
+that is to say a system of laws. Hence the saying put into
+the mouth of Rinaldo degli Albizzi: “No good man will
+ever find fault with anyone trying to defend his country,
+whatever the means he may employ.” 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 writer. Machiavelli by “Patria” understands the
+entirety of social and civilised life, that is to say that
+the State is the only historical and concrete form of
+mankind. He is fundamentally opposed to any indefinite,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>unsubstantial idea of man that would strip him of all the
+historical influences that determine his social and political
+life, and that would make of mankind a shadowy abstraction.
+Such ideologies could mean nothing to the
+sixteenth century Florentine, but they do not mean much
+more to the modern Italian, and this is the reason why
+Socialism in Italy never developed its nobler side. Men
+who, like Andrea Costa, were real idealists of the Marxian
+school were devoid of any influence, despite the respect
+due to their high standard of personal life. If the whole
+of mankind is to be the object of the duties of every
+individual, one might as well abolish those duties; what
+is the business of everybody is the business of nobody.
+Therefore, Italian Socialism was obliged to adopt not the
+high, if impractical, ideals of Northern Socialism, but an
+entirely materialistic form of propaganda, harping constantly
+on higher wages and shorter hours, in order to
+arouse the interest and secure the support of the masses.</p>
+
+<p>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 possible. He could not conceive
+the objectivity and consequent importance of the
+State as moral reality, and still less the intimate subjectivity
+of the objective world in which man realises his will.
+The very word “Fortune” kept to indicate actuality
+was misleading, and veiled his real notion of freedom; 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 doctrines.</p>
+
+<p>Time and the works of Bruno and Campanella, stripped
+of their heretical outlook, were to further in the mind of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>Vico the first maturity of the fruits of which the seed was
+to be found in the Florentine statesman’s ideas of “virtue”
+and political morality. Thus, while the other modern
+nations were necessarily getting more deeply embogged
+in their anti-historical attitude towards life, Italy, in the
+political idleness of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries, was slowly elaborating those doctrines that
+may yet prove to be the ballast needed by all countries
+to weather the present political and social storms.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III_1">
+    CHAPTER III
+    <br>
+    THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND AND ITALY
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>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 impertinence. It
+cannot be reduced into schematic lines, for there never
+was a richer synthesis of life. Never have religion, art,
+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 century. 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 trivial. Strong minds, deep religious feelings,
+the virile consciousness of personal efficiency, do not make
+for tolerance and refinement in practical life; but they
+yield a philosophical, an artistic, a political harvest on
+which their progeny continue to live for centuries, elaborating
+and refining until tolerance is the order of the day
+in philosophical, religious and political matters, whilst
+dilettantism and criticism flourish, preparing the way for
+new generations of creative men.</p>
+
+<p>The philosophy of Bacon was essentially oriented towards
+the world exterior to man, but it had already taken
+to consider moral and especially political life in the light
+of natural causes. The divine origin of the king’s majesty
+was in due time to be denied in consequence of such a view,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>although Bacon little suspected the fact and was ready
+to uphold such divine origin with all the force of his
+genius. Another consequence was to be the consideration
+of human society ruled by the same laws that rule the
+mechanism of nature, and this was certainly pregnant
+with political revolutions. The systematic empiricism
+so characteristic of English politics need not be traced
+farther back. Yet before coming to the political conception
+of Hobbes, who was the first great follower of Bacon and
+one of the first great political thinkers of England, the
+contribution of Grotius must be considered as Hobbes
+has a good deal in common with him.</p>
+
+<p>Hugo Grotius was born 1583, twenty-two years after
+Bacon and five years before Hobbes. Like Bacon this
+Dutchman was a statesman and an ambassador. The
+practice of business had therefore a great influence on his
+ideas and was apt to temper the excess of doctrine of the
+man. His idea of natural law is a heritage both of Pagan
+times and of Scholasticism, and based both on the distinction
+established by the Roman jurists, between the
+<i>jus civile</i> and <i>jus naturale</i>, and on the mediæval notion of
+<i>sociability</i>, a special sense of which he supposes man to be
+endowed by Nature. The way such a notion is applied
+is, on the contrary, due to the more modern theory of
+Nature; and there we meet with an assertion that would
+have roused Machiavelli from his grave if he had heard it,
+and that undoubtedly has given origin to the negative
+understanding of history against which Idealism and
+Fascism are reacting with all their forces.</p>
+
+<p>According to Grotius such <i>jus naturale</i>—the only branch
+of legal studies that can be treated is philosophy—is based
+on the essence of the nature of men. But such nature is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>the same all over the world just as Nature is. It will be
+the same for ever in spite of historical oscillations just as
+Nature will. The presupposition of this nature of man,
+postulated out of and against every experience, is a negation
+of history as the process of the gradual development
+of mankind. Yet unquestionably its introduction in
+modern politics was the cause of a great progress towards
+justice, and in Grotius himself it is balanced by his insistence
+on not taking positive law out of history. 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 history. To be fair, this
+instinct of society deeply inset in the nature of man was
+not of his own invention. It is to be found in Aristotle.
+It is to be found in St. Thomas. But then the instinct
+compelling man to live in community is understood in a
+very different way by the Greek philosopher, by the
+great Scholastic doctor and by the Dutch statesman. For
+if it is true that historical facts which are political, artistic,
+military, receive their definite character from the ideas
+of the generation that achieved them, 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 generation. So that Aristotle understands by Nature
+the transcendental power which planned the life of man
+as a part of its universal scheme; Thomas Aquinas sees
+in the nature of man that which was determined as
+characteristic of mankind by the Divine will; whilst
+Grotius sees in this sense of society something very much
+like the law of gravitation—not quite, however, since in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>him we see looming out already the ghost of man anterior
+to society, of whom nobody ever heard anything and which
+is, therefore, a pure conjecture. Considering this nature
+of mankind as his basis, 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 nature. Once the filiation of law as the
+product of this nature of man was established, private
+and public law obviously derived from the <i>jus naturale</i>,
+and the state must originate from an agreement of its
+components.</p>
+
+<p>If Grotius had been able to realise theoretically the
+immanence of the <i>jus naturale</i> in society he would have
+foreshadowed all the political theories of the eighteenth
+century, and worked out his scheme with far more cogency
+than the men who came after him. As it is, the rationality
+immanent to human society is too difficult for him and his
+time, and unable to realise the moral will of the collectivity
+he is thrown back with Machiavelli on a very empirical
+notion of liberty. The subjectivism of Grotius is the
+subjectivism of the philosophy of his time alternatively
+empirical and rational, so that the contract by which men
+give themselves a form of government is irrevocable:
+they are free to assume it, not to reject it. Obviously the
+souvenir of the Reformation with its political struggles
+must have been quite fresh in the mind of his contemporaries
+and influenced him, as the Revolution of England was
+to influence Hobbes; otherwise it would be difficult to
+understand how men could be considered as free to choose
+a constitution and not to discard it. The contradiction
+was too patent not to be noticed, but there again the
+philosophy of Bacon and his followers influenced too
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>much the thought of the whole century to allow any resolution
+of the difficult problem. It was the nature of man that
+led mankind to form communities, 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 men, the government
+itself was conceived of as mechanical as Nature, and its
+laws as irrevocable as natural law. The contradiction
+inherent in the twofold notion of man’s nature, held by
+men like Grotius, led them to deny the liberty of man
+which was the ground of their theory.</p>
+
+<p>Hobbes has a metaphysic so clear, so well determined,
+that his political conception is bound to have that
+cogency which belongs exclusively to the works of men
+whose philosophical grounds are theoretically first rate.
+That Cromwell should have offered him a high office in his
+government is not surprising. Obviously the mind and
+character of Hobbes are for prompt decisions and coherency
+of action. Yet his political theories are not fit
+for actual application. It is not impossible that his ideas
+should have influenced the political men of his days; but
+his <i>Leviathan</i> is the conception of a man to whom philosophy
+was <i>doctrina corporum</i>. Bodies can be natural or
+artificial, and the state is the most important of all the
+artificial bodies, man being both a natural body, the most
+perfect natural body, and an element of the state, the
+most perfect of all artificial bodies. Psychology is bound
+to occupy the foreground in his anthropology, and no
+philosopher ever laid a greater emphasis on the distinction
+between theory and practice. Thought is considered after
+the Cartesian doctrine as relatively free, and will as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>dependent upon thought; the superiority of the former is
+acknowledged indeed by all the thinkers of the time and of
+the following century. In psychology the consequence of
+this distinction is a conception of the volitive activity
+that foreshadows the more modern theories of determinism,
+against which all idealisms have fought their most
+strenuous battles and Fascism is actually leading a political
+crusade. For Hobbes asserts the necessity of surpassing
+the state of Nature, in which all men are free, by the sacrifice
+of some liberties and by the sacred preservation of the
+engagements of the contract. But on what ground can he
+require such sacrifice and faithfulness, except that of
+self-preservation? Thus selfishness is at the basis of the
+edifice and there looms already the capital sin of the more
+modern conception of Liberalism. The state is conceived
+as the algebraical sum of the citizens, the selfishness of
+whose life is guaranteed by the legislature.</p>
+
+<p>But Hobbes was English and, despite the influence of
+French Rationalism, 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 system. Such an
+artificial agglomeration of political atoms, understood as
+it was to be the most realistic and naturalistic view of
+political life, could not have stood the test of application;
+and Hobbes is carried away by his own notion of the contract
+into a theoretical view of it which is distinctly
+superior in moral truth, and much nearer to historical
+truth. When men come to an agreement for the defence
+of the peaceful life of each of them the state comes into
+being; but it is not a temporary, mechanical agglomeration—it
+is unity wanted by men. In his natural state man
+enjoys some kind of security based on the <i>concordia
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>multorum</i>, but this concord is not sufficient to ensure
+peace, it is merely enough for animals. To ensure human
+peace something more than common consent is needed.</p>
+
+<p>Union, the union of citizens becomes something superior
+to the sum of their particular selfishnesses. 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 reached, he none the less joins
+hands with all political idealism. 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 act; 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 state. Hobbes had had enough political
+experience to realise intuitively that which his natural
+mechanism did not allow him to conceive on theoretical
+grounds.</p>
+
+<p>Such a happy intuition does not, however, take him
+any farther. His state has nothing of a moral reality,
+and the union of the citizens which it implies falls back
+on the ground of the law of self-preservation. 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 contract; and his natural man another abstraction
+not to be met with anywhere. The identification
+of man and state only happens in history and there it was
+to remain, unlooked for in England until Hume, whilst
+in Italy Vico was to herald the reality of society and
+history as the creation of man between 1720 and 1730.
+Thus, like Grotius, Hobbes ended by denying the freedom
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>of will that the very possibility of the contract had implied.
+His ideal state, his empirical state, his natural state, are
+so conceived that they continually oppose each other or
+are identified one with the other in his theory.</p>
+
+<p>The state is therein as mysterious as Nature, and its
+laws are no less imperious than the laws of Nature, calling
+as they do merely for passive obedience, and at least in
+Hobbes’ theory the state is no less eternal than Nature, for
+after the contract the less the citizens have to say in the
+matter the better. Yet Hobbes was an Englishman and
+the fact was to tell; even in this most abstract theory he
+cannot lose sight of the realm of experience. And if the
+ruler was a bad one? Like all his countrymen the father
+of the <i>Leviathan</i> is ready to trip up his logic rather than
+to offer a scheme which after all might not work. If the
+ruler proved an inefficient or bad one the citizens could
+discard him.</p>
+
+<p>In his opposition to the kingdom by the grace of God
+the father of the <i>Leviathan</i> is led by his methodical
+Naturalism—and not at all by a repugnance for any form
+of tyranny. 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 God. But the more absolute is this authority
+the better; and his indifference as to the choice of the
+state-religion did not make for tolerance. Not to think of
+Cromwell when one studies Hobbes is impossible; for
+the philosopher in front of Nature, his almighty though
+mechanical Nature, is just a fanatic observer as intolerant
+as Cromwell and as energetic in the systematic application
+of his philosophical faith. Only men of faith can alter the
+historical world, for religion remains one of the greatest
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>factors in men’s life, although it does not always appear
+under the cloak of a definite church. In such cases, however,
+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 flourish. Cromwell was intolerant, was a
+fanatic, but no more and even perhaps less essentially so
+than Hobbes, and both are a perfect embodiment of the
+genius of England during the first half of the seventeenth
+century. Never has the life of a country expressed itself
+more fittingly in its theoretical and practical term. Hobbes
+like a bee had gathered after Bacon the best of Italy, and
+the echo of Campanella is to be detected in the most
+characteristic part of his theory of knowledge; he had,
+besides, imported the result of the most recent scientific
+works of the French and Dutch thinkers. 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 world.</p>
+
+<p>The two fanatics, one in the immediateness of his faith
+in the righteousness of God, the other in the elaboration
+of his faith in Nature, had done a great deal in the way of
+shaping the character of modern England, and the theory
+of one and the revelation of the other held in germ much
+that meant progress for the whole of mankind. But both
+by their superlative intolerance and despotism called for
+the reaction that was to oppose most formally man to the
+state. For Hobbes at least the fact was inevitable, his
+<i>Leviathan</i> engulfs all rights and interests; at the same
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>time in his theory of knowledge he picks up the trend of
+Campanella and sets the basis for a nearly Protagorean
+subjectivism. How far the theory of the <i>Leviathan</i> was
+from Italian mentality cannot be judged from contemporary
+opinion. The Italians, or at least the greatest number
+of Italy’s scholars, were giving themselves up to academical
+or to immoral pastimes. The Cinquecento had been
+personified by Ariosto, Machiavelli, Aretino, the three
+expressions of the Italian society during the sixteenth
+century. The characteristics of the times had been an
+artistic fancy, full of serenity, aware of its being a mere
+play of imagination and making fun of itself; an adult
+thought that swept away the illusions of fancy and feeling,
+to make its own way towards the shrine of science, at the
+very core of what is the world of Man and Nature; then
+a moral licentiousness, remorseless because unconscious,
+therefore shameless and cynical. Ariosto’s fancy is
+displayed to such an extent that it mostly aroused mere
+irony from his contemporaries. Machiavelli brings realism
+and logic to their ultimate consequence, arousing thereby
+a sense of repulsion in men far more wicked than he was.
+Aretino’s cynicism reaches such a monstrous pitch that the
+most dissolute men turn away sickly from his books.</p>
+
+<p>That was the era in which the great nations of Europe
+were taking their definitive personal physiognomy.
+(England, as has been said, had already the features that
+were going to be the family likeness to be reproduced all
+over the Anglo-Saxon world by her sons.) As De Sanctis
+points out, the European races were building up the
+“Patria” so fondly dreamed by Machiavelli for his own
+people, a “Patria” which was to be a political unity,
+fortified and cemented by religious, moral, and cultural
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>elements. At this same time Italy not only failed to build
+up a “Patria,” but was losing her independence, her
+liberty, and her beloved and treasured pre-eminence in the
+historical world. Not that such a catastrophe was realised
+except by the keen mind of Machiavelli. It was unconscious,
+it was bound to be unconscious, since it happened
+just because national consciousness had vanished. How
+could it have assumed national shape? The name of
+Italy was to become a geographical expression, for its inhabitants
+were not citizens, they were mere inhabitants,
+subjects by natural determination of this or that petty
+Prince. 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 person, through the manifestation of a
+personal will in foreign politics, which are the country’s
+assertion as a personal conscience. Thus a people is
+acknowledged as a nation by the rest of the world the
+moment when, through an action, the final scope of which
+is purely national, it asserts itself as a living organism able
+to manifest a will and act upon it. What Machiavelli had
+termed the <i>corruttela</i> of Italy was the absence of national
+and religious consciousness, and he had pointed a way
+out of it.</p>
+
+<p>He was too much of a positive mind not to realise that
+the difference between past and modern times was due to
+a spiritual difference. Not knowing what to attack in the
+mentality of his countrymen, both clever and learned
+beyond words, 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
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>on a religion that pervaded the whole of civic life, and now
+were quite a practical affair modified continually by the
+chance of other countries waging war in Italy. His great
+blunder, 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 progress. Machiavelli pronounced
+human things to be always in movement, but in spite of
+this intuition he could not detect the processional character
+of such movement. As it was, it was sufficient to
+induce him to reject the notion of the natural state of
+Man as a constant so dear to Grotius. Yet it could not
+help him to realise that his own times, with all their
+wickedness, might be thought superior to Roman times;
+and Guicciardini, a friend of his, felt himself much wiser
+than Machiavelli because he had no illusion on the possibility
+of making a nation out of his countrymen. It was
+absurd to him, to be always calling on the Romans for
+example, it was just like wanting a donkey to gallop
+horsewise! But whatever the wisdom of Guicciardini, who
+made his God of his own private peace and well-being, a
+God no less exacting than the State of Machiavelli, and
+considered the world as his world, thereby enforcing to
+irrelativism the subjective atomism that was disintegrating
+Italy, Machiavelli was a wonder child of genius whilst
+his wise friend was merely a clever gentleman making
+egotism the special study of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Mussolini’s view on the civic regeneration of the Italian
+politically amorphous classes is very much like Machiavelli’s.
+Political indifference is also to him a result of the
+lack of religiousness in the spirit animating Italians in their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>public life. But four hundred years have passed and he
+could not if he wished turn to the state religion of Pagan
+Rome. If the basis of social life has to be religion, the
+positive religion has to be the one historically belonging
+to the people.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the Machiavellian conception of history, the
+sixteenth century was to see the introduction of the
+experimental method, as practised in natural science, in
+the treatment of history at the hands of no less a man than
+Guicciardini. His <i>Storia d’Italia</i> is in twenty books and
+covers the period between 1494 and 1534, thus beginning
+with the invasion of Charles VIII of France and ending
+with the fall of Florence. Francesco de Sanctis, with the
+heart of a man of the Risorgimento, commenting upon
+this work, so remarkable from many points of view, says
+that the historical period of which it treats could rightly
+have been called “The Tragedy of Italy,” but that the
+historian has not the slightest notion either of the unity
+or of the import of this tragic drama. One could object
+to the great critic that to realise such oneness of drama
+was impossible to Guicciardini, as the tragedy had its
+root in the historian’s unconsciousness of this oneness or
+rather of the possibility of this oneness, since such oneness
+did not exist in Italy when Guicciardini wrote, except
+perhaps in the heart of his friend Machiavelli. People of
+other countries provided them with the political events
+and the philosophical theories that kept their brains
+going.</p>
+
+<p>The works of Grotius were taken and easily studied
+in the land of jurisprudence, for the studies that went on
+flourishing were law and history. But the purpose was a
+sterile erudition, at least at the moment, for apathy had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>reached such a superlative degree that the martyrdom of
+men like Bruno and Socino passed unheeded—worse than
+unheeded, not understood—so that it is absurd to hear
+modern Free-thinkers reproach the Church with the death
+of Bruno, who was far from questioning the right of the
+Church to burn him. The Church in its practical policy,
+like all the institutions in Italy, was lacking in ideas and
+in life. The centre of civilisation had moved northward,
+and south of the Alps people were getting more and more
+away from it, more and more effeminate. In a land where
+indifference was the shroud of a martyr, 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 authority.
+The seventeenth century, inaugurated in Italy
+by the burning of Bruno, had in literature little to boast
+of besides the <i>Jerusalemme liberata</i> of Tasso, for it began
+with the <i>Arcadia</i> of Sannazaro and ended with the
+<i>Arcadia</i> of Guarini. On the other hand Campanella, the
+most eminent philosopher, was not the only one. 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 world.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps nothing is more expressive of the life of the
+mind than this temporary intellectual dearth and sterility
+of a race whose faculties were, even then, far above the
+average. Reduced to political non-existence and therefore
+to speculative unproductiveness, the whole country
+seemed to have gone to pieces just on purpose to let the
+new nations shake off the yoke of history, of a history too
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>heavy with its pagan heritance to allow full play to the
+new forces of modern, that is to say Christian, civilisation.
+For modern thought and modern politics seemed to reject
+authority and history, in order to have the possibility of
+displaying what they held virtually in their mediæval
+and Christian youth. They rid themselves of the past just
+as the Church had done at her start, throwing overboard
+Pagan culture. 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 intuition, modern nations will
+cease to be anti-historic now that the value of man as a man
+has been asserted, and has even been over-asserted? For
+if such were the case then Italy’s standing out of the game,
+in order to elaborate slowly the historical forces that may
+contribute to give back to the world the ballast it seems
+to have lost, would appear to be in harmony with the developing
+process of Mind. Nations have their dawn, their
+twilight, and their night, but Mind never rests or sleeps,
+and through their individual characteristics all the races
+tell more or less directly on the whole life of mankind. If
+Italy had to stand aside to let England and France assert
+the individual worth of the most inferior human beings,
+and work up systems where the weakest may be heard in
+legal circles, then her attitude all through the sixteenth
+century is that of a boxer training for his next match. To
+rid politics and law of the idea that legitimised all authority
+by appeal to the Will of God (as it was commonly
+understood to be a kind of <i>Deux ex Machina</i>) something
+had to be appealed to that could be considered as a religious
+support on the modern side. Nature was upheld as
+antagonistic to superior authority and religious interference.
+Yet Nature, at least to the men of the seventeenth
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>century, was the work of God, and if mankind was endowed
+with a longing, or beset with a necessity for society,
+surely the Creator of mankind was responsible for it. The
+fact is that it was not of the will of God that the jurists
+and philosophers wanted to be rid, for they could have
+found cogent arguments to uphold the thesis, so dear a
+century later to Rousseau, that God had created man free,
+and that he was therefore at liberty to choose the political
+constitution that suited him best—conforming by so
+doing to the Will of God: it was the authority of men,
+the authority of tradition, which taught that it had always
+been the natural lot of some men to obey, and the natural
+lot of others to command; and that is far more Pagan
+in its political origin and Aristotelian in its theoretical
+form than Catholic. It was the hierarchy of birth, quite a
+Pagan notion, that men were fighting against in Northern
+Europe during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Aristotle’s first book on politics settles the point for
+the hellenic world. Some men are born to be masters;
+some are born to be slaves. He that is to be a master is
+born with the qualities that befit command; he that is to
+be a slave is born with the qualities required to fulfil
+orders. Were it not so, Nature would have failed to fit
+each of them for the end to which it brought them into life.
+Man was what he was to be anterior to his birth. As to
+slavery, as an institution it was to be deplored; it was
+rather sad for the people who were born slaves, and terribly
+immoral at best, but it was an evil that could not be
+avoided inasmuch as it was essential to the nature of
+society. The metaphysics and religion of the day could
+not conceive of any alteration in the nature of things.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Stoics and Epicureans did improve, but not much,
+the idea of liberty. The best thing for men to do was to
+know Nature and their own natural disposition, not to go
+against the natural bent of things and of their constitution.
+Thus the part of Fate was reduced and the dignity
+of man asserted. But the reduction and assertion would
+have been more verbal than actual had it not been for
+the Romans, who with their realistic mind could not
+overlook the fact that man’s <i>virtus</i>, or lack of it, made a lot
+of difference in his life. Their religion and philosophy
+though lacked originality and had no adequate notion of
+liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Christianity was to relieve mankind from such a fate.
+Man is in the world to save his soul. The grace of God
+is necessary to him, but he only can achieve his own salvation.
+If you want your horse to jump, as the sportsmen
+of the old school used to say, give him his head; the
+freedom to use his neck, head and shoulder to the best
+of his ability. If God means man to save his soul, he must
+have given him sufficient freedom to be made responsible.
+And in fact the proclamation of this power of man is the
+import of the New Testament. Everything is possible to
+him that believeth. This is far from Aristotle, so far that
+men could not at first realise what it meant, 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 realisation.</p>
+
+<p>Man’s liberty, man’s dignity, 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 fact. It could, therefore, only be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>through the greatest misrepresentation of historical facts
+that Pagan times were identified with the cause of liberty
+and equality of men, two ideas that are essentially Christian
+and were in their present form unknown to Paganism.
+Such perversion of facts cannot be, however, ascribed to
+a wilful adulteration of history. The men who upheld it
+are too many and some are too obviously sincere. Yet
+on the other hand it is impossible to ascribe it to an instinctive
+foreboding of immanence as nowadays understood.
+The only possible explanation is the force of repulsion
+for the immediate past that is inherent in the
+historical assertion of any new social force. A new age
+always asserts itself by fighting its antecedents and often
+the very cause of its coming to light.</p>
+
+<p>Hobbes, rejecting sovereignty by the grace of God to
+enforce his own conception of the sovereignty of his
+<i>Leviathan</i> grounded on the <i>Bellum omnium contra omnes</i>,
+is merely conforming to the philosophy of Nature, which,
+as materialism, was to him a religion, a new religion that
+must take the place of the old one, at least amongst
+educated men. In its objectivity Nature stood to him as
+God; an awful divinity that had a good deal in common
+with the God of Calvin in the inalterability of its will.
+But few of the new thinkers had the courage to be as
+coherent as he was. For he was quite aware that the
+substitution of Nature for the God of Christianity, as the
+ultimate reality to which political forms had to be traced
+back, made for a greater implacability of political laws.
+The others sometimes pretended to believe and mostly did
+believe that the unknown <i>quidditas</i> which they call human
+nature had a luminous social instinct that had been marred
+through what they called the Dark Ages; and they did not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>realise that the belief in such nature of man was elaborated
+in the schools of the Middle Ages, 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 angles, it was just as abstract and could no more be
+proved on experimental ground. The nature of man taken
+as implying the necessity of or longing for social arrangements
+is illustrated in history; but it is the essence of
+history to relate to men the deeds of men, thereby is enforced
+the necessity of having society in order to have
+history. So that isolated man cannot enter history. Of
+men anterior to society we can, therefore, know nothing.
+But prehistoric times are not of necessity presocial; indeed,
+the art that flourished in such periods shows the
+existence of social intercourse in times of which we have,
+up to now, no historical knowledge. In any case the philosophy
+of politics if it wants to borrow the experimental
+method of natural science must take history for its basis,
+with all the limitations that this implies, in order to reach
+positive conclusions. The political thinkers of the seventeenth
+century thought and acted as men of deep convictions,
+but of very faulty methods; the world they cast
+into shape reposed on an assumption which is the most
+metaphysic of all the metaphysic axioms they hated so
+much; it will be more and more obvious through the
+eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Italy stood aside. Italian minds could not have made
+such a position theirs. The attitude of a Bacon, of a
+Descartes, of a Hobbes, could not be assumed in the land
+of Machiavelli and Bruno, the fathers of the idea of history
+understood as a constructive process of Science and
+Society, of Campanella, the man who foreshadowed in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>the sixteenth century the phenomenologic conception of
+reality and the notion of immanence: which may have
+been, which was in fact heretic, but is undoubtedly the
+offspring of Christianity, and knows that it is. The race
+whose energy and virility had been maimed by the
+constant contemplation of the past, by thorough identification
+with the past, had been politically stunned like
+the people of the Bible who turned back when they should
+have been looking and proceeding forward. Italian
+scholars kept assimilating and admiring the philosophical
+production of foreigners, and the more readily praised
+and the more truly appreciated the new theories that they
+felt farther from imitating them. What they could give
+they gave, in legal and historical erudition, 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 him, just as
+Scholasticism had prepared the abstract ground on which
+the theories, that were to give their democratic or individualistic
+impulsion to the modern world, flourished two
+centuries after a reaction had started against the abstractness
+of Scholasticism.</p>
+
+<p>Francesco de Sanctis realises it because he has lived
+for this oneness of Italy, thereby giving it the full reality
+of an historical person. Guicciardini was as interested in
+the calamities that befell the individuals as de Sanctis was
+in the tragedy of his country, 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 power.
+He was an accurate man, with immense knowledge and
+great acuteness of mind taking each fact in its most
+minute particularity, but losing sight of the importance
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>of such events as the Reformation. He was a naturalist
+and uses the same methods as if he studied vegetables or
+minerals, looking into the intimate structure of facts to
+find out why they are as they are. Men therefore appear
+in his work like a product of Nature, whose actions are as
+fatally determined as those of an animal. It is impossible,
+therefore, to find in Guicciardini’s twenty books a single
+page alive with the feelings that throb in Machiavelli’s
+historical works; he keeps the calm brow of the naturalist
+counting the legs of an insect. And Italy, until Vico
+comes, will go on between these two ideas of history and
+society.</p>
+
+<p>Guicciardini sees man free in appearance, but in reality
+bound to act according to the determinations of his
+character, of his temperament, of his circumstances; 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
+known.</p>
+
+<p>Machiavelli foreshadows a kind of sociology and in his
+truly Italian synthetic view of history he sees the play of
+the various forces, spiritual forces, that make of the human
+world a different realm of reality from that of nature,
+where forces exclusively physical are at play. “Patria,”
+liberty, nationality, humanity, social classes, interests and
+passions, are to him forces that move man, but would
+never move a plant or a tree.</p>
+
+<p>But the fact is, to quote again De Sanctis, that Machiavelli
+is the starting point of a period and Guicciardini is
+the ultimate end of the preceding age.</p>
+
+<p>France, Spain, England, Germany and the Netherland,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>were overrun with blood, shed either through the War of
+Religion or in consequence of the Inquisition, in the proceedings
+of which the governments of the different states
+interfered to further their political interests though seldom
+on the side of mercy. In Italy there was no struggle; men
+do not face death or torture without passionate convictions;
+and while other races, young as they were, had
+such strong convictions the country which had reaped too
+easy and too rich a harvest between the eleventh and
+fifteenth centuries, had given all that her assimilation of
+ancient wisdom could give, and at the end of her career
+she sat exhausted on the wayside to watch the young ones
+at play, as a connoisseur watches a boxing-match and
+takes all the hints which may be useful to him. Metaphysics
+could not flourish under such circumstances, as
+virility is the first requisite for original thinking, so
+Italian scholars stood on the watch taking law and
+thought from abroad.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV_1">
+    CHAPTER IV
+    <br>
+    THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY IN FRANCE
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>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
+edifice, at once harmonious and imposing, seems the
+realisation of an architectural scheme perfectly in keeping
+with the genius of France. Everything tended to that
+unification of the country, 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 sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of absolute monarchy has never been conceived
+and realised in exactly the same way as in France. M.
+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 country. But it has yet to be shown what is really
+the origin of a conception of political reality that so far
+seems to be unique.</p>
+
+<p>Monarchy was indeed just as absolute in Spain and in
+Austria. But in both countries it remained comparatively
+feudal. So that the <i>bourgeois</i> origin ascribed by M. Bainville
+to the Capetian Monarchy, its intimate relations with
+the Middle Class amounting to a sort of mutual league
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>against the great feudal lords, is sufficient to endow it with
+the modern character that attracts the student, eager to
+penetrate to the living core of the life of political institutions.
+It could not, however, account for the rationality
+of its development, for the harmony and beauty of its
+historical features. 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
+fascination. 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 æsthetic.</p>
+
+<p>Modern philosophy, above all in Italy, understands art
+as the expression of the life of mind. Hence, a battle,
+a treaty of peace, a law, a form of government, can be
+considered an artistic masterpiece just as well as a poem
+or a monument. Now between the coronation of Henry
+IV and that of Louis XIV the monarchy of France perfectly
+expresses all that is positive and, therefore, historically
+constructive in the life of the country. Its spiritual
+and practical forces meet in the king’s person and receive
+thereby their historical realisation.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>L’Etat c’est moi</i>,” says Louis XIV. “<i>Cogito ergo
+sum</i>,” says Descartes. 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 certitude,
+the root of all reality, was identified with the individual
+act of thinking. 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 thing.
+It is the consequence of sixteen centuries of Christianity,
+and in their mathematical conciseness the two formulas
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>are the best proclamation of the genius of France in all its
+clear, simple and luminous logic. They are, however,
+at the same time a revelation of what is weak in that
+genius. To be so clear, so luminous and so simple, French
+philosophy was bound to be abstract and radical. 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 life,
+a fact which was bound to carry in its trail the political
+revolution of the eighteenth and the economic one of the
+nineteenth century. When a government reduces a class
+to political non-existence the part formerly discharged by
+that class must be entrusted to another, 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 state.</p>
+
+<p>France one, under the government of one man. It
+bears a family likeness to the tragedies of Racine and
+Corneille. Such an idea is great and beautiful as <i>Horace</i>
+and <i>Le Cid</i>. But it owes its grandeur to a simplicity that
+condemns it to leave out much of political reality, which
+is indeed as complex and multiform as life itself. Therefore,
+though it is beautiful, its beauty is bound to be a tragic
+one. When the concept had become a fact, when Louis
+XIV could say <i>l’Etat c’est moi</i>; when France was at least
+one under her King, the French monarchy was in the
+position of the bullet that has been shot right in the bull’s-eye.
+The aim is perfectly caught, the steely little thing is
+helplessly stuck there, useless. The funeral knell of
+absolute monarchy is rung by this identification of the
+Sovereign with the State. As a political institution it was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>perfect. Perfection is static and cannot, therefore, belong
+to life, which moves towards perfection but never is
+perfect.</p>
+
+<p>Politically the feudal nobility was hewn down with the
+indifference with which a venerable forest is razed to the
+ground to make a French garden. 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 architect. In France society was to go on
+living its historical life of eternal alteration and formation.
+The political abolition of the nobility was a most active
+ferment to breed more speedily the modifications to
+come. The French nobility lost its virtues; corrupted
+by the idleness enforced upon its members, it infested the
+moral atmosphere and this in spite of the very remarkable
+men produced by some of the old stocks. Soon the other
+classes required its social elimination and they wanted
+it to be as radical as the political annihilation had been.
+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 minds. The king and his people
+making one without the intervening links of classes—no
+constitution could be more simple; but its realisation
+required the amputation of what is necessary to the life
+of any monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>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 close. M. Jacques Maritain
+has rightly bestowed on Descartes the epithet of revolutionary,
+but it could be extended to Louis XIV if one did
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>not run the risk of seeming paradoxical. For both their
+self-assertions, politically and theoretically absolute, are
+equally anti-religious and anti-historical. The position
+assumed by Mind whenever man is really religious implies
+self-negation. If God is, He must be infinite and Man, by
+comparison, nothing; at least such is the logical sequence
+of the doctrines upheld by most religious people. 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 begets, man can turn to history and
+trace there intuitively (as the first great thinker of Italy
+has done), the part played by each one of mind’s activities.
+Religion then appears independently of personal conviction,
+a constant element in the life of man, more or
+less preponderant, always there, as the recognition of all
+that is to man not-self. It is where modern thought has
+failed to realise this, either theoretically or historically,
+that it knows only the first term of the relation which is the
+basis of every social organisation. Liberty and law are
+correlative terms just as are light and shadow. Liberty is
+the claim of the subject and law springs from the recognition
+of the object. Louis XIV and Descartes, thanks to
+their unbounded selfishness, assert emphatically their
+empirical individuality. For them the self swallows up
+the other term the not-self, that the modern world after
+them seems to ignore.</p>
+
+<p>Descartes was endowed with the most precious gifts
+that make the scientist and the thinker. 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 mind.
+Foreigners, even when their knowledge of his language is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>far from perfect, can take his <i>Discours sur la Méthode</i> and
+read it with perfect ease and a feeling of intellectual and
+æsthetic well-being. To read this and to walk through the
+park of Versailles are equally indispensable to understand
+that great century in France. And both walk and reading
+make very much the same impression.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the reader will easily pick up in the
+Cartesian theories ideas known to St. Augustin and to the
+Scholastic Doctors against whom Descartes reacted so
+violently. The visitor might just as well notice in the park
+or on the noble façade of the palace lines and decorative
+patterns reminding him of the Renaissance Villas seen in
+Italy, but this does not deprive the palace and its setting
+of their purely French character. The fact is that the
+seventeenth century with the last half of the sixteenth
+and the first of the eighteenth, appears in the life of Mind,
+i.e. in history, as an Anglo-French period, whereas the
+fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth had been in
+their artistic and intellectual production mainly Italian.</p>
+
+<p>The ideas elaborated in France and in England had
+come from everywhere and from all centuries, Italy being
+chiefly the historical and natural agent of communication,
+a sort of historical point of convergence between antiquity
+and modern times as she is geographically between east
+and west.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of originality, without playing upon words,
+can be called the “original sin” of our modern world;
+born from the contempt of Bacon and Descartes for the
+past, it is ending now in Futurism and Bolshevism. To
+attempt to create something new without roots in the past
+in art, politics, science or philosophy is not merely absurd,
+it is impossible. The living dialectic we term history displays
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>each of its moments as the logical sequence of the
+preceding one and the elaborating stage of the next. The
+work of Descartes will live as long as our intellectual life
+lasts. Yet this very work, in which he inaugurates the
+anti-historical method, is the best illustration of the law
+of history, 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 centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV brought a political form to the precision of
+a mathematical formula, that is to say he made it absolute
+and by so doing rendered the evolution, characteristic of
+all social organisation, impossible for the monarchy he
+represented. That which is absolute is unalterable. To be
+absolute this French monarchy had to be static; whereas
+every political system must be dynamic. Perfection is the
+negation of development. The person of Louis XIV was
+the perfect realisation of France’s ideal of an absolute
+Sovereign and as such it was, therefore, the conclusion of
+the process which had brought him to the throne.</p>
+
+<p>The method of English empiricism, which consisted,
+after Bacon, in looking at the exterior world with wide
+open eyes to get a notion of reality based on sense knowledge,
+was taken up in France with as much enthusiasm
+as the theories of Descartes were taken up in England.
+The two countries balanced each other, France tending
+to the unity of man’s consciousness, England to the full
+realisation of the world of senses. Life obviously is neither
+of these but their combination or more properly their
+synthesis. So that the mutual influence of both countries
+is the best illustration of the life of mind, single in its development,
+multiform in its manifestation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span></p>
+
+<p>What is tragic in the philosophy of Descartes is almost
+perfectly illustrated in his own life. No one has more
+eloquently proclaimed the subjectivity of life and reality
+than he has through his own scholarly selfishness. Only
+Louis XIV could be his rival in this self-assertion. The
+self-centred monarch, the self-centred scholar, can vie
+with each other. Therefore he may be held to be just as
+anti-religious and anti-historical as Louis XIV; the one
+could not forget the majesty, the other the genius, with
+which he felt himself invested to bow down in worship
+of the King of Kings, in worship of the Word of eternal
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>Yet both were believers and convinced Roman Catholics.
+The contradiction of fact thus introduced in their lives
+find its most exquisite expression in the vow of Descartes,
+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 soldier, as a man of the world. They prevented
+him from attending freely to the satisfaction of his longing
+for scientific researches. Hence his impatience to retire
+from this vast world, full of rights and duties, where men
+suffer and require help and love. The anti-religiousness
+of such feeling need not be emphasised, it is obviously
+worse than that of many people who, calling themselves
+atheists, were drawn into deifying nature or their own
+negation of God!</p>
+
+<p>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 Justice, is a most Christian
+saying. But in the works of St. Augustin, where Descartes
+found it, it implies either the belief in God’s presence
+in the heart of every believer, or the immanence of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>transcendental self in every empirical self, whereas in
+Descartes’ own writings and mind neither of the two is
+to be found. His rationalism seems brutally to reject
+belief outside philosophy, outside the theoretical and intellectual
+world altogether. It only <i>seems</i> to do so, because
+it is one of the first stepping-stones of Idealism, 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
+bad. Hence the duty of vulgarising rational thinking
+through education, which was to become paramount in
+pedagogy and politics. 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 deeds.</p>
+
+<p>English philosophy received through Hobbes all the
+rationalism it needed to balance the excessive empiricism
+of Bacon and the world was ready for Illuminism, which,
+originating in England, became one of the greatest and
+noblest movements recorded in history in spite of its
+many flaws.</p>
+
+<p>Italy could not, indeed, offer anything to make up for
+such rationalism and empiricism. With her political
+virility the whole country was daily losing its speculative
+originality and fecundity, for as Vincenzo Cuoco was to
+realise a century and a half later, the two manifestations
+of man’s genius, political and theoretical, usually go hand
+in hand. The intellectual gifts of Italian scholars were
+wasted in academic pastimes or devoted to works of
+erudition, which prepared for the genius of Vico the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>materials of his historical vision of reality, but were of
+little avail to counteract the impatience displayed by
+France and England, turning their backs upon history in
+order to feel free to shake off the yoke of every traditional
+authority. Feeling, intention, worship, so many elements
+of spiritual life, were almost discarded to make room for
+the goddess Reason.</p>
+
+<p>Art and Religion were thus denied in their essence. Art
+could only be at best didactic or hedonistic, it was, therefore,
+considered at the service either of thought as a means
+of vulgarisation of scientific knowledge, or of sensation as
+capable of causing agreeable emotions. As to Religion
+it was disposed of in a more radical way. Theoretically
+misrepresented, historically ignored, it was to be tolerated
+by English philosophy for practical reasons as a political
+instrument and as the best educative force. It had been
+useful and necessary in the centuries of dark ignorance,
+but to the century that was to call itself the age of light
+it was a hindrance, an impediment of which mankind was
+to be rid at all cost. Illuminism, that is to say the enlightenment
+of the people, and the anti-religiousness of the
+philosophers were identified. The war waged against
+religion was confused with the war waged against ignorance.
+One step only was needed to make of ignorance
+a synonym for religion.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody waited to enquire why religion was everywhere
+and why it was always a factor in social life; nobody
+anyway could have answered the question as it would
+have implied historical research, a synthetic view of
+history, for which no one was fit. The Italians lacked the
+philosophical basis for such work, France and England
+lacked the turn of mind necessary to do it with intelligence.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>Germany was still in her teens until Leibniz came to
+proclaim the intellectual coming of age of his country.
+Thus religion was a puzzling problem to philosophers and
+the lack of intelligence towards this enigmatic X was to
+breed a great many political difficulties. Religion alone
+could have made up for the oncoming individualism, first
+social, then economic, which threatened universal destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Man was raised to the honours of the altar, hailed
+as ultimate reality in what is most negative and empirical
+in him. His intellectual activity was to become the
+principle of reality, which indeed it is in so far as it is
+transcendental and, therefore, divine. But the seventeenth
+and the eighteenth centuries could only know this activity
+as far as it is empirical and, therefore, non-divine. Illuminism,
+with all its generosity and noble impulses, was unable
+to realise what transcends the reason and experience
+of every single man. It was to be the lot of Germany and,
+above all, Italy to conceive in speculative form the life
+of Mind and to realise the natural function of religion
+throughout history.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">
+    CHAPTER V
+    <br>
+    GIAMBATTISTA VICO
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In their studies of the Neapolitan philosopher, 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 good. 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 Croce.</p>
+
+<p>Vico is the most Italian of Italy’s thinkers. Yet a close
+survey of his ideas reveals in his works, besides the most
+Italian of intellectual heritage, the presence of the deepest
+and richest tendencies of the modern philosophy of
+Europe, be it French, English, or German. He is thus the
+best illustration of his own theory. In the man of genius
+the most concrete historical determinations blend with
+the broadest universality of ideas. But his critics have
+usually chosen to look exclusively to either of these
+according to their own nationality; and this way of
+abstracting from one of his qualities has made him
+obscure and baffling.</p>
+
+<p>While his countrymen lived upon the contribution of
+France and England, Vico, to the naturalistic intuition
+of atomism, which implies individualism in morals and
+politics, opposed the idealistic intuition of history as
+the developing process of mankind. To the abstract
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>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 world. In this he revealed himself as a direct son of
+the Italian Humanism and Renaissance, an anachronism,
+and the fact was nearly fatal to his fame, as this put him,
+as a writer, in a position of great inferiority to Locke or
+Descartes. He never deals with the question he had sat
+down to treat, because he never realised beforehand
+where he was going, and it was only on his way that his
+mind became properly fixed on the point that was obscurely
+tormenting him. One ought not to read either the
+titles or prefaces of his books, for he usually starts on a
+traditional and even stale matter. Thus it is that starting
+as a good Platonist to write what Michelet took his
+Scienza Nuoa to be, that is to say a philosophy of history,
+he got stranded in the deepest speculation on the nature
+of man’s mind quite in contradiction to the doctrine of
+Plato. He had begun by considering the origin of man’s
+intellectual activity. The difficulty was great, but he
+casually observes that whatever the difficulty of the
+problem and its obscurity, one always has the steady
+light of the conviction that <i>the world of the Gentile nations
+is the achievement of men; and that the principles of it must
+be found in the nature of our human mind and in the force
+of our understanding</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Such proclamation of man’s power to create his own
+world, the only historical world, was indeed a revolution
+and Rousseau’s theories, evolved to ensure the liberty of
+man to arrange society to suit his requirements, are
+childish compared to this sublime thought of a man who
+was a Catholic with all the humility and simplicity of a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>child. 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 Mind. But before starting to expound the
+forms of Mind’s activity, for which he claimed the right
+of historical citizenship, it may be good to note that
+Vico’s criticism or continuation of previous systems was
+simply dialectical; inasmuch as he contradicted the main
+thesis of his favourite authors just as well as those of
+Descartes, who was his pet aversion, or accepted them to
+transform them. For instance, he took the Cartesian
+certitude and opposed it to truth; calling certain that
+which is the result of particularising knowledge if one may
+term it so, or of knowledge directed to the particular.
+And he took the nature of man as Grotius or Hobbes had
+misunderstood it, a kind of mechanism the laws of which
+were as fatally unalterable as the instinct of beasts, and
+changed it into the nature of Mind, quite spiritual and—there
+is no other word—Christian.</p>
+
+<p>Vico turned to the periods of history which were the
+most remote from the psychology of his time. Consequently
+he was led to study the inferior forms of mind
+such as imagination, violence, simplicity; whereas others
+had meditated only upon the nature of man as they found
+him refined by Religion and laws, and had grounded their
+theories on his mature intellect. They ignored the
+imagination of his youth. They studied his will morally
+trained and overlooked the wild passions of his forefathers.
+It is, therefore, 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 nature; and gave concrete ground
+for the assertion of man’s spiritual rights and duties.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span></p>
+
+<p>Art, or as he calls it, poetry, is not born through the
+caprice of man to give pleasure or clothe philosophic sayings.
+It was born out of natural necessity, it is in short
+the first operation of man’s mind. Man, before he can
+conceive a notion, such as table or dog, realises them with
+an operation not of the intellect, but of his imagination.
+Before he can reflect with a pure mind, he perceives with
+emotion. Before he can speak in prose he speaks in verses.
+The nearer poetry gets to the particular, the better it is;
+the higher reflection rises towards the universal the more
+perfect it is. Yet if one can say that the poet is the sense of
+mankind and philosophy its intellect, one’s conclusion
+coincides with the saying of Scholasticism, <i>Nihil est in
+intellectu qui prius non fuerit in sensu</i>, since without poetry
+it is impossible to have philosophy and civilisation. After
+many views on the subject, often contradictory, his real
+idea is undoubtedly that the first form of mind is poetry,
+anterior to the intellect and free from reflection and
+reason. Myths, he holds, do not refer inevitably to real
+men, they are essentially historical truth under the form
+it is wont to take in primitive minds. Any myth is an
+individual, as Hercules, and accomplishes individual
+actions—as he kills the Hydra or cleanses the stables—but
+it is also a concept, the notion of useful and glorious
+activity. It is, therefore, both a universal as the expression
+of a concept and a creation of man’s imagination as a
+particular fancy.</p>
+
+<p>Passing to morality and to society, although he reacted
+against rationalism, Vico’s assertion of the irrational has
+nothing to do with Rousseau’s. He took for his ground
+history, literature, archæology and above all, law. Thus
+his first discovery led him to substitute for the Golden
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>Age that had been postulated as the initial stage of mankind,
+“the natural state of man,” an obscure period in
+which man did not differ much from the wild beasts and
+was at best an irrational and non-intellectual being. He
+was to develop the great and immortal notion that lay
+hidden at the core of “jus naturalism,” the notion of
+society as immanent in man, which had been in the air
+since Thomas Aquinas had spoken of it as of a sixth sense
+of man.</p>
+
+<p>Utilitarianism is the first target on which Vico opens
+fire, and he takes it as Hobbes and Spinoza had formulated
+it. Utility cannot be a sufficient ground for morals since
+it springs from the temporal part of man whilst morals are
+grounded on his eternal part. No principle of utilitarianism,
+whatever the forms ascribed to it by philosophers,
+can justify the process of differentiation, which is the
+constant development of social organisations. Deceit,
+force, need, imply as already in existence the society they
+are supposed to have produced. How could the supposedly
+happy and simple first owners of the soil be deceived into
+giving up their claims, if they had no desire whatever and
+no relation of any kind. For relations imply some kind
+of social state even if tacitly agreed upon. As to force, the
+first rulers were not merely strong in their individual
+force; 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 tendencies; and their law
+was force indeed, but force <i>a natura præstantiori dictata</i>.
+The real ground of society is, therefore, moral, and as such
+essentially spiritual.</p>
+
+<p>Yet at first sight Vico’s view of the origin of law and
+society appears very much akin to that of “jus naturalism”;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>but as soon as it is understood that Vico’s notion
+of man’s nature is the Christian or spiritual one, then the
+difference is quite evident. Law to him is natural to man
+because what is not natural can neither stay nor last. Fear
+is certainly the origin of society; not, however, the mere
+fear of wild beasts or hunger but the fear of oneself; fear
+of solitude due to remorse and shame. Out of shame Vico
+sees arising the senses of honour, fidelity, probity, trust
+in promises, truth in words, honesty in deeds. So that
+society comes to have moral consciousness for its ground,
+and one can indeed consider society as the realisation of
+man’s best nature, of man’s spiritual conscience. 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 men.
+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 uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>The nature of this fear, manifesting itself in remorse or
+shame, of this sense of decency giving rise to moral
+consciousness, is easy for us to understand on account
+of the systematic treatment Mind has received in subsequent
+studies, above all in the works of Croce and Gentile.
+This fear is what we usually call self-consciousness; 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 him. Now in this case common language,
+as in many instances, lays a trap for our understanding,
+since at first sight it seems to imply that the
+child’s uneasiness of manners is due to a self-centred conception
+of himself; whereas it is in fact his realising the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>importance of his surroundings that makes him wish to
+please his elders, to attract their notice, or to appease their
+indignation when he feels guilty. It is, therefore, the consciousness
+of the non-self that we term self-consciousness.
+But this trap is easily avoided, for philosophy knows nowadays
+that it is impossible to reach self-consciousness
+except through the conscience of that which we are not,
+for <i>We</i> without the rest of the world in opposition to which
+we are <i>We</i>, means nothing at all. Thus the self-awe in
+which Vico sees the first origin of society is the consciousness
+man has of his not-self, of the exterior world, or, to use
+an image, of the immense shadow that surrounds him and
+is in reality his own negativity, all that which he is not. 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 Power.</p>
+
+<p>Vico’s is not a speculative hypothesis. Primitive men
+wandered savage and ferocious, without family ties or
+matrimonial bonds, were the prey of the wildest passions.
+Whence could they receive the law that would prevent
+their mutual destruction? They cannot be saved by the
+wisdom of men since human wisdom does not exist as
+yet, neither by God, He has retired among His chosen
+people and left to its fate the rest of mankind. But He
+has left them the character of men and their humanity is
+sufficient to save them. Thunder strikes them with fear,
+and the consciousness of their impotency, of their own
+limitation, suggests the confused and obscure notion of
+that which is not limited. And to appease the Almightiness
+of this infinite and enjoy its favour they refrain from
+some things and do others. They refrain from satisfying
+some of their physical cravings and Mind’s liberty is the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>result; so that liberty is born with her twin sister, moral
+law, out of the fear of God, out of the awe-inspiring consciousness
+of the not-self. The land becomes covered with
+altars; the caves behold the union of men and women
+eager to ensure the Divine favour to their nuptials; the
+soil is broken to receive the body of the dead who return
+to the gods. Ethics are born with the three fundamental
+institutions of society, the cult of the Deity, matrimony as
+the first call of society, the veneration of the dead as the
+first assertion of immortality.</p>
+
+<p>Why has Croce been able to state, after this energetic
+assertion of Vico on the essentially religious origin of
+society, that the father of the philosophy of Mind agrees
+with the school of natural law in their purely immanent
+notion of ethics? Because like them he constructs his
+science of society independently of revelation. 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
+People. It is not on the idea of law and its origin that he
+criticised Grotius, Pufendorf, and the rest, it is their idea
+of religion that is distinctly quite alien to his.</p>
+
+<p>Religion for Vico can be understood first as a conception
+of reality as such; and this is the reason why it is in
+Gentile’s theories one of the essential moments of Mind as
+recognition of the not-self, or object. Second, it belongs to
+practical reality as the basis of ethics. In this case religion
+is the very essence of ethics as it is the very essence of
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>It is, therefore, evident that what Vico intuitively, perhaps,
+unconsciously, is striving to assert is the eternity
+of religion, historically proved apart from any revelation.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>Thus in his search for the ground of morality he can
+abstract from positive religion, but how could he abstract
+from the knowledge of truth, or more than knowledge, the
+consciousness of truth? Plutarch, after describing the
+primitive religions and their horrors, wonders if it would
+not have been better not to have had any religion than to
+worship the gods in such impious ways. And Vico, after
+quoting him, 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 time,
+whereas nothing ever grew on atheism. There is no such
+thing as historical or social life without a religion, full
+either of tenderness or ferocity, rational or fantastic, but
+in any case providing man with the idea, more or less clear,
+more or less noble, that there is something which transcends
+the individual, in which all individuals weld into
+one, and which provides man’s morality with the object
+of his moral will, and thereby means Law.</p>
+
+<p>In his understanding of the period in which man had
+been a brute, Vico was much nearer to the Bible than the
+Protestants had been. He accepted as a matter of fact
+the distinction between the Gentiles and the Jews, as
+implying the radical privation of any supernatural help
+bestowed on the former, and he thought of them as being
+in a pre-moral state, a state that was indeed devoid of
+morality, but full of moral tendencies, and from which
+mankind emerged through the realisation of those tendencies.
+Such realisation is not on the other hand the effect
+of a Divine grace, it is <span class="allsmcap">NATURAL</span>, due merely to the development
+of the natural light granted to every man that comes
+to life. Man’s free will is weak and between passions and
+virtue might succumb if he was not upheld in his efforts
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>by Providence. For Vico makes an absolute distinction
+between the grace of God and Providence. The grace of
+God, in which he firmly believed, is an extraordinary help
+granted to some men and particularly to the Chosen
+People; Providence is the ordinary help of God granted to
+all men as their birthright so to speak, as inherent in their
+nature as men.</p>
+
+<p>Vico stood henceforth as the best antidote to the
+dangerous side of Anglo-French speculation. The philosophy
+of Mind had yet to be developed, but it was sufficiently
+asserted to claim man and all his activities as belonging
+to spiritual reality, to historical reality. Thus what Vico
+called Providence provided the ground for a more human,
+that is to say, more spiritual, idea of liberty, just when
+the men who were going to popularise Illuminism were
+preparing for their task. But his was a far more difficult
+idea, and less palatable as well, for his liberty springing
+as it does from Religion, hand in hand with morality, is
+a double-faced divinity. One never can, according to
+such a conception of life, grasp liberty without law, or
+enjoy a right without satisfying the corresponding duty.</p>
+
+<p>Passing from religion to law, Vico in his objective
+understanding of history rejects a justice that should
+consist in measuring everything, for says he, first this
+would not be the philosophy but the mathematics of law;
+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 deserts, and thus to maintain that which is
+the only true equality of men. The natural law, according
+to him, was born at first under the form of just desires,
+just violences; then it took the form of moral fables;
+ultimately it was asserted in all its rationality and generosity.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>Away goes with this the abstract and anti-historic
+notion of an eternal and natural law, superior to positive
+laws. Vico goes on bowing to the <i>jus naturale philosophorum</i>
+but instead of putting it high above history, he
+looks for it exclusively where it can be found—that is
+to say in history, making it thus historical.</p>
+
+<p>After accepting Plato’s idea of an eternal Republic,
+Vico breaks it to pieces to come out with a quite different
+conception of his own. The only really eternal Republic
+is the eternal process of history in all the variety and
+succession of its modes of realisation, from the man-brute
+down to Plato. Every single truth has its practical manifestation,
+its practical consequences; to think in this or
+that way implies living and acting in this or that way. The
+divorce of theory and practice resulting from the difficulties
+that arose a century before between scientific men
+and their churches is here absolutely annulled.</p>
+
+<p>Vico calls men to realise that in the human world of
+history, the only one real to man, since it is the work of
+man as Nature is the work of God, thought and action go
+hand in hand. Theories bring inevitably a modification of
+practical life. Man does not exist, at least not to our knowledge,
+as an individual devoid of a social and therefore
+historical frame. Art is the moment in which man moves
+in a self-centred world, abstracting from the universal, and
+is therefore the subjective moment of liberty, the moment
+of intuition. Religion is the moment in which man stands
+full of awe in front of the world which is his not-self,
+abstracting from the individual he is, and is therefore the
+objective moment of Law, the one link from the intuitive
+to the rational realisation of life as morality and, therefore,
+society. History, however, never shows the one apart
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>from the other, as nature never shows one of two correlative
+terms absolutely apart from the other. Light or
+darkness may be prevalent, both are always there.
+Liberty and law have alternately held their sway over
+our modern, that is to say Christian world, and their
+synthesis may now be called into being by the grandsons
+of Vico. 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 reacting; and reacting through not a retrograde process,
+but through a forward movement which shall enforce
+liberty as the correlative term of law, and allow religion to
+discharge its function as the essential basis of man’s
+spiritual life and not as an instrument of politics.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">
+    CHAPTER VI
+    <br>
+    ILLUMINISM IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The characteristic that distinguishes English Illuminism
+is the reasonable adaptation of its theories to practical
+circumstances; this is best illustrated in the greatest man
+it has produced. Locke was for the preservation of faith
+in Revelation and tried to make it agree with reason. 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 man. He sees in
+the Scriptures the revelation of truths which would have
+been out of reach of man’s natural powers, limited as they
+were to sense knowledge. Such a view was characteristic
+of the fair-mindedness of the practical and political man,
+but it held a snare in the sanction thus granted to the most
+unphilosophical and unhistorical notion of Deism and
+natural religion. 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 objectivism. His ethics take human
+felicity as the higher aim of theoretical and practical
+activity, which is not original at all, but has the merit
+of being quite consistent with his subjective assertions.
+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
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>level above the theory afterwards formulated by Rousseau.
+But nowhere does this inconsistency of his practical
+application with his main system appear as clearly as in
+his work on the State.</p>
+
+<p>William of Orange stands to Locke as Cromwell does
+to Hobbes, not that the king can be compared to the
+dictator, but his reign beheld the inauguration of the
+political system which is the greatest gift of England to
+mankind; 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 life, that is to say
+in history. Yet Locke was enforcing the distinction with
+all his might to avoid the inconsistency already noticed between
+the theoretical and practical aspects of his work.
+As Hobbes had done before him in England, and Grotius
+in Holland, he saw the basis of the State in a contract,
+but he was the first (although Algernon Sydney had prepared
+public opinion for such an idea) to assert that the
+collective will was embodied not in any single person, but
+in the majority of the people. There he was perfectly
+consistent with his gnoseology, the multiplicity of the data
+of sense knowledge destroyed the unity of the metaphysical
+conception. Only legislation, however, fell to the
+share of the majority; the executive and foreign policy
+were to be entrusted to hereditary monarchs. 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 development, which was
+the last assertion of historical necessities. Hence politics
+went on gradually losing touch with historical consciousness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span></p>
+
+<p>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 system.
+Theories springing from a synthetic conception of life
+do not want readjusting to practical life, do not want a
+period of assimilation under their theoretical form and
+another of elaboration into practical systems. The best
+example of this is the simultaneous production of Gentile’s
+most important theoretical work known to the English-speaking
+scholars as the <i>Pure Act</i> and of its practical
+offspring the <i>Fondamenti della Filosofia del Diritto</i>, both
+of 1916, followed at five years’ distance by their political
+application by the Fascists who had, so to speak, no direct
+knowledge of such works; to say nothing of his pedagogy,
+the application of which the author has had the opportunity
+of carrying out with her own pupils. But then such
+theories are conceived without abstracting one minute
+from practical life, and their basis is history and society as
+they are in real life. Of Fascism the same may be said;
+its idealism does not prevent it from being the most
+thoroughly practical and realistic of movements.</p>
+
+<p>The philosophy of the seventeenth century had, however,
+made this consistency of theory and practice an obviously
+unrealisable chimera for the men of the eighteenth century,
+and whilst French rationalism brought people to think of
+rational theories as capable of radically reforming society,
+English empiricism held that ideas may work very well in
+theory and very badly in practice. Such a distinction was
+the source of great difficulties. If thought and action were
+the terms of an irreductible dualism it was natural to say</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>Meliora video; deteriora sequor.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span></p>
+
+<p>Indeed, 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 problem. They had
+separated religion from philosophy, religion from law and
+politics, and as they had the <i>jus naturale</i> they must have
+natural morals. 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 mentioned. It could, in fact, be traced to the
+Stoic school and even farther back. But this did not make
+things easier to the people who held positive religions to
+be useless, whilst on the other hand they were ready to
+admit their value as establishments providing for the
+moral care of the lower classes. In their abstention from
+history, 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 wrong. They could not realise that this function
+of the churches is merely a consequence of the position of
+the believer towards his divinity, that such a position
+brings man to realise what is to him not-self, thereby
+giving to the moral law the objectivity which alone can
+free it from the constant alteration of selfish motives,
+and bestow the stability necessary to its efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>A natural sense of right and wrong was acknowledged in
+order to find in Man himself an explanation of his moral
+life. This original predisposition, that was to ensure
+autonomy to man’s higher life having been admitted, the
+psychological mentality of the time did not hesitate to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>make it a matter of psychology to determine which was
+the organ of this natural function of man. Whilst such
+researches proceeded, Cumberland having already illustrated
+the Ciceronian doctrine of the <i>lex naturae</i> as the
+natural reaction of altruistic tendencies against the selfish
+motives of Hobbes’s theory, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a
+friend of Locke, contributed the best of all these theories.
+He claimed the autonomy of morals, freeing it no less
+from physiological than from theological fetters. 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 nature.
+Goodness, righteousness, and virtue are real of themselves,
+a reality; they can be conceived and understood; they
+cannot be inferred from anything else. Why he did not
+work out so original a notion is easily understood; the
+philosophy of his time afforded him little more than
+psychology, and his personal gifts and breeding fitted him
+rather for æsthetics than for so arduous a task; hence
+it was perfectly natural that his idea should have developed
+into a real eudemonism. The nature of virtue is
+to him harmony, he thus blends the conclusions of
+materialism and of the doctrine which upheld the social
+instinct of man; the supremacy was to be ascribed to the
+egoistic motives by the school of Hobbes, to the sense of
+altruism by the others. To Shaftesbury each of these
+schools held half of the truth and only the combination of
+both tendencies could produce in their harmony real
+morality. Neither lax nor ascetic morals must result from
+the harmonious combination of the two opposites. Such
+a theory implies the perfection of the individual as the
+ultimate end of all intellectual life; it throws light on the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>nobler side of Illuminism, and if it is not theoretically
+sound it is the blending of all that was best in a movement
+that was generous in its optimism.</p>
+
+<p>The variety of the grounds which were ascribed to
+morality is sufficient to betray the original flaw of such
+philosophy. Even Lord Shaftesbury had been unfaithful
+to Locke, mainly owing to his own strong sense of the
+æsthetic, but also owing to the unsuitability of the great
+philosopher’s doctrine, as it was understood then, as a
+basis for a theory of ethics. Thus Utilitarianism came into
+being. “The best for the greatest number,” was to remain
+as the ideal or ideology of Illuminism; and the best
+in question became more and more the material best, and
+less and less the moral best. After the natural sense of
+sociability which had taken the place of the will of God at
+the basis of the state, after the natural sense of right and
+wrong which had been elaborated as a substitute for the
+Decalogue, very little was left of the <i>tabula rasa</i> idea of
+man’s soul upheld by Locke. 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 life;
+and Nature was gradually opposed to history as rational
+to irrational.</p>
+
+<p>This natural religiousness had had its first English
+assertor in Herbert of Cherbury. To him man’s soul is
+far from being <i>tabula rasa</i>; it is a book that opens
+naturally and displays its hidden treasure. And John
+Toland, in his efforts to retrieve free thinking from the
+interference of the State, determines the limitation of the
+state’s jurisdiction, to which the citizen’s <i>actions</i> must be
+subject but never his <i>opinions</i>; whilst he limited his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>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 liberty. Then the
+negativeness of any liberal government was obvious, 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 broken. Thus again the
+radical difference between educated and uneducated which
+had been fostered by the cultural movement of Humanism
+and Renaissance, 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 condition.
+This cautious exclusion of the people from the new intellectual
+religion was a condemnation; the rational cult
+proved an artificial theory and could have no vitality.
+Yet it would be a perversion of facts to present it as due
+to the personal feeling of Toland or any other man. It
+was the consequence both of the predominance of Rational
+Reality in the systems then in honour, 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 world. 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 time, then the impossibility
+of introducing social partitions in the life of the
+Mind. Of religion they only saw its practical organisation
+in the different churches; of the need from which the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>pre-Christian forms of religion had sprung they had not
+the slightest suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>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 man.
+Christianity had revealed the profound humanity, that is
+to say spirituality, of the world, and Man, feeling himself
+to be the main agent of God in the world, realised his
+subjective importance. Only God had remained above him—only
+the notion of God’s presence could enforce objective
+law. It is not the Decalogue and the Church’s precepts
+which are meant here. It is the recognition, essential to
+religion, of a reality existing besides his own self that compels
+man to realise such objectivity of law. St. Paul laid
+an emphatic stress on the fact. But the <i>caritas sibi</i> is
+that which raises the subject, raises us and enlarges our
+capacity until we are capable of taking in the object, all
+that we are not, the world in short; what modern
+philosophy calls the not-self. When man does realise this
+objectivity, this distinction of the world from him, his
+attitude is that of respect not only towards God but towards
+the world. Thus we have the religiousness, that
+Fascism is striving to enforce until it will pervade the
+whole of life, practical and theoretical life, since it does
+not part them. This notion of religiousness, however, is
+ultra-modern, and could not have been conceived in
+pre-Kantian days, in pre-Hegelian, pre-Gentilian days. It
+is not mediæval by any means, and Illuminism is one
+of the stages through which Mind has had to pass, to
+realise a subject capable of taking in the object without
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>going back to Pagan objectivism. For this objective
+world must at all cost be such through subjective objectivity.
+If it is to remain a Christian world in its very
+objectivity it must remain a human world, the world of
+man, the world of the subject whose religious recognition
+of his not-self is a supreme self-assertion.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Before the end of the century Reason fell from her
+enthroned glory, and sentiment was glorified as the
+purest activity of man’s soul. So that the century of light
+ended by raising the less rational motives of man’s
+life to semi-divine honours. This reaction was due to the
+unilateral dogmatism assumed by philosophy in France
+owing to the political circumstances of the country.</p>
+
+<p>With a democratic sense that is partly due to the
+democratic origin of the French monarchy, which to be
+absolute, had to rest on the support of the people, the
+thinkers of France did not dream of keeping their conclusions
+to themselves. What they considered true should
+be public. Perhaps, in their feeling that it is the duty of
+the man of science to communicate to the people the
+result of his studies, 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 divulgation. It is frequently remarked
+that they were the real champions of Illuminism inasmuch
+as they claimed the right of the people to be enlightened;
+the idea of Truth which prompted such a claim is the loftiest
+part of their contribution to philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>The French mathematical mentality, after having
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>exported Descartes, had imported Newton, and as Hobbes
+and, before him, Bacon, had come to France to find the
+yeast they needed to develop their own theories, so now
+men like Voltaire and Rousseau made their leaven out
+of Locke’s and Hume’s doctrines and studied the political
+institutions of England. In France, from Montaigne, from
+Pascal, men had learned the cautious prudence, 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 world, tired of religious struggles
+and the emphatic expressions of dogmatism on all sides;
+it was due also to his charming style and the purity of his
+French mind. So French is he, so much a man of the West,
+that his charm is felt alike by French and Anglo-Saxon
+minds. One cannot resist him. In his analytic scepticism
+he is so logically methodic, that his style is like the colour
+of a piece of antique bronze, inviting the onlooker to touch
+it whilst its lines, its lights and shadows reveal the
+powerful mind of the sculptor. Montaigne through his very
+respect for the Church helped to ruin the religious spirit
+of his countrymen, and the genius of Pascal could not
+have made up for it, even if its mysticism and its
+repugnance for the <i>Moi haissable</i> had not been tinged
+as they were by the self-assertive spirit of his time.
+Both mysticism and scepticism take their practical form
+in Pierre Bayle.</p>
+
+<p>Few men ever enjoyed the gift of sympathy with which
+he was endowed because few men are so superlatively
+sincere. He does not renounce religion, he is indeed quite
+a religious man, but his religion is negative on account of
+his mysticism as a believer and of his scepticism as a
+scientist. To him the Thomist and Lockian point of view of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>the super-rationality of the Revelation is an illusion. In
+perfect sincerity he could say <i>credo quia absurdum</i>, and
+like Tertullian proclaim definitely the divorce of science
+from religion, of rationality from irrationality.</p>
+
+<p>His next move was to divorce morality from religion.
+Men could be excellent in Pagan times and they can be
+wicked in Christian times, yet Christianity is superior
+to Paganism; obviously religious opinions are independent
+of the morality of men.</p>
+
+<p>He then passed to politics. 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 done, and
+since it had nothing to do with morals the Church could
+have nothing to do with man as a citizen. This evidently
+made not only for tolerance, but for indifference on the
+part of the state in all religious matters.</p>
+
+<p>Expelled from science, morality, and politics, 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 time.</p>
+
+<p>Voltaire overshadows the century as Louis XIV had
+done the preceding one. His greatness does not depend on
+his contribution to philosophy, but on his immense
+efficiency as a propagandist of the conclusions reached by
+philosophy. 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 theories.
+Less sincere than Bayle, he took up his sceptical conclusions,
+without, however, sharing his mysticism, and
+in the prose of the greatest French writer of the century,
+he set to work to popularise the destructive criticisms of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>all dogmas. Voltaire may have been convinced that dogmas
+were harmful, but as he did not bring forward anything
+to put in their stead his influence was negative.
+What it would have been without the constant recall to
+present experience of English empiricism cannot be
+gauged; as it was, present experience was rather an
+incentive to dissolve and destroy the whole social order
+than to build; and towards past experiences there could
+be no recall whatsoever, or rather there was only one and
+an original one, but it could not be heard.</p>
+
+<p>To Voltaire history offered no direct lesson. 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 itself. His clearness of
+sight limited his outlook to the present, 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 country. His religiousness is
+strongly tinged with utilitarianism, as he held, like many
+Englishmen had done, that the purpose of Churches was to
+act as moral check to the lower class. All these fathers of
+Liberalism and Radicalism are more aristocrats than
+democrats. Their worship of culture and reason makes for
+political tyranny and a social system of caste as distinct
+as that of the Indians. Hence it evoked a reaction, and
+this found its spokesman in Jean Jacques Rousseau.
+People were tired of dry reason and its negativeness, they
+felt parched and longed for affirmative works; he came
+out, a man of genius, devoid of the mathematical and
+classical grounding of the others; entirely led by feelings
+and, alternately, by the most generous and lowest impulses
+he was a democrat.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span></p>
+
+<p>Until Rousseau appeared the writers on political
+matters had been either followers of the <i>jus naturalism</i> or
+of the constitutionalist schools.</p>
+
+<p>In Rousseau two streams mingle their waters, for he is
+an artist as well as the most original thinker France had
+after Bayle. As an artist he is the spokesman of his generation,
+and it is as such that his contemporaries took to him
+as they did in spite of his disreputable personal life. As
+a thinker, although the statement may sound very daring,
+he ought to share with Berkeley and Hume the honour of
+being considered as one who made the way for Kant.
+His were mere intuitions; they could not be more as he
+had no scientific or philosophic training. But as Professor
+Saitta has pointed out, his reaction against rationalism
+transcends very much what was grasped by most of
+his readers and even sometimes by recent critics. His
+passionate claim for the important part played by sentiment
+in the life of man and by all irrational forces, original
+though it is, is the impulsive reaction of an artist, whereas
+by the time he wrote, Italy had already had for some
+quarter of a century the works of a man who had claimed,
+with a speculative genius far superior to his, the acknowledgment
+of all the different activities of mind. And
+Giambattista Vico had been a jurist and an historian as
+well as a philosopher. So that his notion of Man was
+capable of taking in, not only his rational activity, or his
+sense relation to the exterior world, or his sentimental
+life, or his religious position, as rationalism, empiricism,
+sensism and mysticism had respectively done; but the
+whole range of man’s spiritual manifestations. Therefore,
+is it that Rousseau’s greatest intuitions are those that
+could not affect Italy in a speculative way. The man who
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>was to pick them up was a German whose genius had all
+the robustness of his country at that stage, coming as it
+was to the fore after having fed on the intellectual production
+of Italy, France and England.</p>
+
+<p>What affected Italian thought most was the weakest
+part of Rousseau. The idea to which he owed his immediate
+fame is that nature made man happy and good, but
+that society had made him bad and unhappy. He was
+thereby contradicting rationalism and empiricism, he was
+flinging his glove in the face of all Illuminism. And he
+could do it not on philosophical ground, but merely calling
+upon life to justify his assertion. That age of light was an
+age of corruption and misery. The lack of religion had
+brought in its trail the lack of seriousness; the abstract
+subjectivism of a century had made of each man a self-centred
+world. Liberty was, so to speak, constantly cried
+for out of tune since it could not be accompanied by the
+assertion of law. 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 best; they had denied the citizens
+the liberty of declaring such contract lapsed when it
+had ceased to satisfy them. As this was due to their
+training in a philosophy that considered the world as a
+machine, Rousseau had no reason to follow them nor to
+see in the state a mechanism subject to laws as inalterable
+as those of nature. Therefore he realised the real essence
+of liberty as inalienable. It could be transferred, not
+alienated. Strong in this sense of liberty Man must fight
+all the unnatural edifice of society which, according to
+him, is the cause of all immorality through the inequalities
+of men it begets.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span></p>
+
+<p>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 man, every single man, with the
+consciousness of his sovereignty. Of the two tendencies
+which have been compared to two streams, one was the
+naturalistic individualism rooted in the thoughts of his
+contemporaries and which he expressed merely as an
+artist, as the greatest artist of the time; the other was the
+idealistic universalism which was personal to him as a
+thinker, but that was bound to remain a source of fleeting
+intuitions on account of his incapacity to raise it to speculative
+consciousness. He roused a powerful echo where
+men like Voltaire and the Encyclopædists failed to command
+attention; 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 readers, even of the
+lowest classes. It was the lowest side of his doctrines that
+spread amongst the people, the part which appealed to
+envy and hatred, two very powerful levers indeed, but of
+which Rousseau might not have chosen to make use had
+he been able to choose. 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 state; but all this comes to nought on
+account of his lacking a theoretical ground for such a
+notion, and he is obliged to fall back on the intellectual
+stock of his time; in spite of his genius, in spite of all
+sentimental intuition of a universal will, he is thrown back
+on a will which is merely the sum, the numerical sum, of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>the single wills. Thus it is that he gave us the system
+which enthrones quantity while it aims at quality.</p>
+
+<p>His first principle that men are made all alike by
+Nature, happy and good, is, as most of the philosophy
+against which he was the first to react with the power of
+genius, perfectly anti-historical and, therefore, abstract.
+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
+Communism. If the nature of man, thus hypothetically
+accepted, is as abstract and as unreal as an algebraical
+axiom, it was bound to lead to political and economic
+hypothesis just as abstract and as unreal. Since history
+shows us in the class struggles and individual competitions
+the main spring of progress, the condition <i>sine qua non</i> of
+all social life, it is impossible even to dream of the elimination
+of such class and individual differences. Life would
+cease to be dynamic, cease to be a moving process, it
+would be static, everything being brought to a standstill,
+which is death.</p>
+
+<p>To look at real life, 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 <i>Liberty
+and Law</i>, another century and a half was needed. 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
+Mind, not as the handmaids of reason but in their full
+autonomy and necessity. Mind is no longer pure reason,
+and philosophy does not exclude but imply religion and
+art, the two moments of law and liberty, although such
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>distinction of activities does not destroy the vital unity
+of man’s conscience. Mankind is no longer the arithmetical
+sum of X beings reduced to the same type and value, 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 country. Consequently, for the abstract
+man of Rousseau a Man can be now substituted who
+never is Man as Man, but Man in his full reality as son, as
+brother, as husband, as father, as worker, as citizen, as
+believer, as artist.</p>
+
+<p>To make this possible, however, a long process was
+required, the first stage being Rousseau and the application
+of his theories even in their negativity. For to reach
+Fascism, which really puts men on the same level, it was
+necessary to break through class distinctions as they
+existed then, that is to say as static partitions meant to
+stay as they were. It was necessary so that power should
+slip from the hands of people, who considered it as their
+natural birthright, into the hands of those who are actually
+fit to hold it. 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 other.</p>
+
+<p>And, as the philosophy of Italy proclaims, ethical
+reality is neither of the subject in itself, nor of the object,
+but of their actual relation; so Fascism does not allow
+class elimination but protects class competition as the
+best means of raising the spiritual and economical standard
+of the nation.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">
+    CHAPTER VII
+    <br>
+    THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN ITALY
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It is not surprising that German philosophy found an
+adoptive country in Italy. Most of the speculative notions
+of Kant were formulated fourteen years before Kant was
+born in Vico’s <i>De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia</i>, and
+Hegel’s most original conception, forty-five years before
+Stuttgart had the honour of producing him, was acted
+upon in the <i>Scienza Nova</i>. Even if Vico had never been
+realised in his totality, 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 cogency.
+Vico, independent of any knowledge of Leibniz’s theories,
+had come to share several of his ideas merely because they
+faced the same problems and both had practical and synthetic
+speculative minds. Also Vico with his hostility for
+rationalism, his sympathy for empiricism and his criticism
+of both found himself very nearly in what was to be
+Kant’s position. His preparation, which was more legal
+and historical and archæological than Kant’s, closed the
+way to a clear and precise view; but it was superior in one
+sense inasmuch as that preparation provided him with a
+richer, a fuller view of reality, thus allowing him to foreshadow
+Hegel as well as Kant.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest man who reacted against Rationalism and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>Empiricism in politics as factors of a sterilising Utilitarianism,
+reducing man to the most abject egoism, Mazzini, is an
+intuitive genius like Rousseau and like him a son of the eighteenth
+century, rising above his generation. But whilst the
+one showed little or no sense of history the other saw it as it
+really is, animated by ideas and created by the will of men.
+One writer had had a very great influence on the great
+Genoese, who never knew even as much as his name,
+Vincenzo Cuoco. He was what might be called a writer of
+political pedagogy, as the problems he faced are always
+practical and usually political. The education of which he
+was an ardent apostle was the civic education of the
+inhabitants of Italy; and like all men whose aim is
+practical he sets his ideal in life and not in science. He is
+the pedagogue of the first dawn of Italy’s national consciousness
+at the time of Napoleon. Born in 1770 in the
+Molise he died in Naples in 1823. Among the Neapolitan
+Jacobins he stood as an exception in the lack of enthusiasm
+with which he viewed the French Revolution. He had
+assimilated all the ideas of the French writers, but he
+was a student of all social, political and economical problems;
+so that it is no wonder that he should have come,
+through the influence of F. M. Pagano, to respect Vico
+and look askance at the new systems. His fundamental
+principle was that human reality is historical reality, that
+is to say the reality which is not, but for ever becomes, and
+goes on becoming and developing not through extrinsic
+causes, but through its own activity, intrinsic and autonomous;
+that such activity transcends the single activities
+and their historical determination; its source is identified
+by him as Divine Providence. Such was the principle from
+which moved all Vico’s philosophy, and though Cuoco
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>could not even suspect the speculative value of it, he
+realised it practically, and it was to him a luminous
+beacon, 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 troubles.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he could not be satisfied with a French Constitution
+because Vico had taught that “governments must
+be drawn in conformity with the nature of the men who are
+to be governed....” The French Revolution seemed to
+him drawn for ideal men who did not exist. According
+to him a constitution must conform to the nature of the
+people and be produced by the people, through the few
+men who are fit to interpret its historical will and realise
+its particular requirements. 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 Vico. Not that this fact is considered here as
+a coincidence—if Mussolini is the genius of Italy which he
+is hailed to be, it is but natural that he should realise in
+its practical application a theory which is so perfectly
+Italian. A constitution cannot be “good for every
+nation.” If it is supposed to be, it means it is good for
+nobody. 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 man, and
+as such eternal; it is bound to be always temporary and
+historically determined, according to the vices and qualities,
+according to the ways and the history of the people.</p>
+
+<p>In this brief exposition of what were Vincenzo Cuoco’s
+most important ideas on politics, we meet constantly
+with sentences that might be met from the pen or on the
+lips of Mussolini. Censure can do little to reform the moral
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>and political life of man. Feasts and premiums are better
+means; 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 bad. This is pure
+Fascism. The government must not act as a brake, but
+rather as a propeller or a helm. Public virtue must be
+nursed, not by diminishing the avidity of the lower
+classes, but by showing them the way to satisfy it. <i>The
+love of work</i> is the one means of regenerating the lower
+classes. A good government must, therefore, destroy the
+callings that are unproductive; 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 callings.
+“Work,” writes Cuoco, just as a Fascist minister might,
+“will make us independent of the nations upon which we
+depend.” The Love of Man for his country must spring
+from self respect; and this, indeed, is as far as one could
+go more than a hundred years ago towards the identification
+of state and citizen, which is the basis of Fascism, and
+has been formulated in its speculative form by Giovanni
+Gentile in 1916. 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 people, for the unification
+could only be attained by awakening national consciousness
+in the single consciences. Cuoco called this the
+formation of an Italian public spirit.</p>
+
+<p>When this follower of Vico in 1802 reached Milan,
+capital of the Cisalpine Republic, Melzi realised his
+value and entrusted him with the foundation and direction
+of the first <i>Giornale d’Italia</i>. Four articles written in
+1804 are probably those read and meditated upon by
+Mazzini and are of such a quality that they could be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>written to-day. 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 reality. The spiritual building up of the
+citizen is the real conquest of political autonomy. To
+achieve such a task it was necessary to foster the love of
+agriculture, and of the militia—compare Mussolini—and
+to replace self-love and personal vanity with the love of
+the country and national pride. The “City” to Cuoco is
+not one thing and the citizens another, the prosperity of
+the former depends on the moral and practical efficiency
+of the latter. He was full of contempt for the dreamers
+who thought that everything may be expected from the
+laws. But the men who roused him to real passion were
+those who argued that the Army, the navy, commerce,
+were cares that should be left to the great nations, to
+England and France for instance. To this he objected
+that those countries had been small, smaller than the
+Italian states, and had grown through the steadiness and
+efficiency of their national will. Such efficiency and steadiness
+of national will he called “public spirit.” The regions
+whose inhabitants did not think of being or becoming a
+great country, would never be nations. For the small
+states there was one law; either to become great or perish.
+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 1911.</p>
+
+<p>Again in 1804, reviewing in his <i>Giornale d’Italia</i> a
+philosophical work, Cuoco expresses the desire to see
+philosophy flourishing in Italy, for the development of
+speculative thought was in close relation with the political
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>state of society, and it was important that a nation should
+not be theoretically sterile. “It is a long time since we
+received it,” he writes, “first from France with the works
+of Descartes, then from England with those of Locke.
+The periods of political greatness of each nation always
+coincide with those of its philosophical greatness. The
+first strength is Mind; weak is the arm of those who lack
+it or think they do.” 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 “heroicising” the people of his
+country through giving them an heroic will and a national
+conscience.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that Mazzini should have realised what
+Rousseau could never see. The ethical nature of what
+goes under the name of “Nation” is a Mazzinian concept.
+When Hegel speculatively proclaimed this it had been
+already intuitively conceived, artistically expressed and
+religiously observed by the men to whom Mazzini’s ardent
+faith was like an electric current. The Mazzinian articles
+of faith were few, and had never been theoretically worked
+out. This helped their adoption by people who would never
+have grasped the import of a huge system. Whilst
+Rosmini and Gioberti were read by the few, Mazzini was
+on the lips and throbbed in the hearts of the many, so that
+the war he waged against materialism and individualism
+was effective. His mystic feeling spreads in young hearts
+as easily now as it did then. Lads take to sacrifice far
+more easily than men of a more mature age and Mazzini’s
+declarations all proclaimed self-sacrifice, self-effacement,
+even his idea of liberty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span></p>
+
+<p>At the very time in which the Anglo-French idea of
+political reality was introduced in Italy, to rouse the
+country once more into life with the magic word liberty,
+this young man, a poet, an inspired prophet, was ready
+with a new meaning for that word. 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 body, whereas the self which can conceive
+of liberty, and therefore realise it, is the self everyone of us
+feels when in the silent recess of Mind we have a right to
+claim, a feeling to express, an intuition to cast into sound
+or colour, and a faith through which we link ourselves
+to the political, family, artistic and religious reality that
+has given us the consciousness of such right or aroused in
+us such family, artistic, or religious sense. To him political
+liberty could only mean for Italians the liberty of shaking
+off foreign rule and creating the nation. It was not and
+could not be the liberty to attend one’s private affairs as
+one wished, for this last meaning of the word had been
+elaborated in his country through Humanism and the
+Renaissance, and it was not only obsolete, but was the
+cause of Italy’s corruption and decay.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of empirical and transcendental self, implicit
+in this conception of liberty, came to produce the second
+article of faith in the Mazzinian doctrine. If man were to
+try creating a new natural kingdom and add it to the
+animal, vegetable and mineral offered to us by Nature, his
+attempt would be a vain endeavour. But political reality
+does not belong to the world of Nature but to the world
+of Mind, in which man is a Creator, and where nothing is
+really impossible to him that believeth. This most Christian
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>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 Nature. Thereby it forbids
+any idea of its being static. No one can find at his birth
+his nation ready-made for him; everyone must work to
+the best of his moral, intellectual, and bodily power to
+create it; since the moment the citizens cease to work
+at this, their political task, the country starts ceasing to be
+a nation and becomes a region whilst the citizens become
+inhabitants. The nation is not a geographical unit, it is
+not even history empirically understood, but it is history
+as far as history is process, development, programme,
+mission and sacrifice; in a word, human life.</p>
+
+<p>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 Humanism.
+The Italians had identified themselves with ancient Rome,
+and this had brought them to think of their national glory
+and history as a ready-made affair. In their country they
+saw the Temple of the past, and exploited their ruins
+morally as well as financially. Whilst the other countries
+of the western world had been fighting and labouring, for
+the conquest of their political and financial status, Italy
+had sat on her past glories and proudly wrapping herself
+in Cicero’s or Cæsar’s toga had taken tips from the whole
+world. Mazzini had grasped enough of Vico’s notion of
+man as creator of the historical world to bring to the fore,
+in the average man’s mind, the idea that was the import
+of all the historical philosophy of Italy and, therefore,
+the positive side of his country’s historical mentality.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Cuoco nor Mazzini were philosophers, their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>task was, so to speak, to realise philosophy, to introduce
+other people’s theories into life, and this they did uncommonly
+well both of them, although Mazzini played in
+the Risorgimento so eminent a part that his gigantic
+historical figure overshadows that of Cuoco. But Cuoco,
+through his <i>Giornale d’Italia</i> and his subsequent writings
+had the greatest influence on the best poets and writers of
+the period, to begin with on Foscolo and Manzoni. For
+the first time since Savonarola’s days intellectual life in
+Italy beheld a spontaneous revival of Catholic thinking,
+and this, strong enough since it counted men as great as
+Gioberti, Rosmini and Manzoni, was not due to the
+initiative of the Church. It was spontaneous, intellectually
+so, and Vico may be considered as its forerunner.
+What was paramount was perhaps the moral system of
+Rosmini. He started out to fight Kant’s moral system
+as unfit for use on account of the subjective ground of the
+Kantian imperative, and meaning to fight it he developed
+it and found new ground for it. The moral, 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
+conscience. 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 country. To pass from Rosmini and Gioberti
+to Croce and Gentile, the thinkers who herald the coming
+of Italy as a modern nation, as much was needed as to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>pass from Leibniz, living in the days in which German
+intellectual life and national conscience could be at best
+the object of a mystical worship, to Kant’s time, when
+Europe realised that there were actually such things
+as German metaphysics and a German nation.</p>
+
+<p>In both cases the philosophy has to be, and is, synthetic,
+for in both cases the exigency that opens life with the
+pungency of need, of deficiency, of negativeness, is the
+thirst for national assertion and foreign recognition.
+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 countries.</p>
+
+<p>After the unfortunate war of ’48–’49, Gioberti went into
+exile and philosophy was overtaken according to Prof.
+G. de Ruggiero by an invincible drowsiness. Drowsy,
+obscure, unconscious of their own positions, are epithets
+which can be justly bestowed on the thinkers of the time,
+for eclecticism prevails without the historical culture that
+alone can make it fertile. 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
+consciousness. Among the Positivists, inferior followers
+of foreign tendencies, several remain first-rate historians,
+thanks to a few sentences of Vico kept like the seeds in
+Noah’s ark, and sufficient to prevent them from falling
+into a materialist metaphysic which would have been a
+sterilising curse to the newborn nation. 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 instance, of as good
+an historian as Villari; but this was not unconscious.
+After the efforts which they had made to get rid of pseudo-idealistic
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>metaphysic they did not want to entangle themselves
+in another metaphysic, were it to be materialist.
+On the other hand, they did not want, or were not able,
+to make theirs the position of English positivists. Ardigo,
+for instance, although he is the best Italian thinker that
+upheld Positivism, cannot be compared to a Spencer or a
+Mill.</p>
+
+<p>But speculative voices are never silenced, although they
+may be hushed, and the spiritual exigencies which had
+produced Gioberti and Rosmini were slowly working
+themselves out in other minds. Neo-Kantianism gave
+birth in Italy to a series of historical studies in the field
+of philosophy, 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
+done. Whilst Neo-Kantians achieve little theoretically,
+they do so much historically that one may say that the
+works of such men as Fiorentino, Tocco, and others prepared
+the ground for Spaventa and de Sanctis who in
+their turn have given us Croce and Gentile. All read
+German, English and French, besides Latin and Greek; so
+that we can say that the speculative theories of the whole
+western world were studied in their schools; and that,
+like the child who becomes self-conscious as he gradually
+realises the worth and importance of the people surrounding
+him, Italy has grown to speculative self-consciousness
+through the close study of universal speculation and of the
+history of her national political life, national art, national
+literature, national speculative theories, until her historians
+came to the idea of history as the co-ordination of
+all the different branches.</p>
+
+<p>Bertrando Spaventa taught in the university of Napoli,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>and, a staunch Hegelian, he criticised Hegel in the same
+creative way as Vico had criticised Descartes and Locke.
+He developed and continued the intuition which is at the
+basis of all Hegelian system as Hegel could not have done,
+inasmuch as Spaventa realises Hegel’s logic in its historical
+position, that is to say as the fulfilment of Descartes’
+claim. Thinking means causing to the French mind, whilst
+to Hegel it is not merely causing it is creating. But
+Gioberti had not only expressed the Hegelian intuition;
+he had completed it; thinking is creating, but to him
+proving also is creating. And Spaventa, rich with all the
+history of speculative thought, realised Hegel’s logic and
+prepared it to enter life, thanks to Gioberti’s contribution,
+although Gioberti himself had been far from realising
+it. The speculative possibilities of the Cartesian <i>Cogito</i>
+are exploited to the full; whereas they had been left
+aside by Hegel. Vico’s <i>factum et verum convertuntur</i>,
+pragmatically understood by the Positivists, is here realised
+as a process. But, as is the wont of Italian thinkers, 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 <i>fieri et verum convertuntur</i>
+which is the adequate expression of the historical
+dialectic.</p>
+
+<p>Hegel’s most original and fecund motive was thus nearing
+its theoretical realisation at the hands of Spaventa,
+whilst Vico’s conception of life was practically illustrated
+by Francesco de Sanctis, whose important part in the
+shaping out of Italy’s present mentality cannot be overstated.
+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 Sanctis. In his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span><i>Storia della letteratura Italiana</i> the philosophy of mind
+receives more than a perfect illustration, an æsthetic
+rendering that makes the most abstruse notion of dialectic
+a tangible object of meditation to the average reader.
+Æsthetic rendering is here used as excluding anything
+like theoretic exposition; and such æsthetic quality is
+insured by the great critic’s own gifts as an artist. His
+reading and philosophic preparation are incredible, not to
+be gauged; they are, however, assimilated by him very
+much in the way in which a great artist assimilates his
+technique and intellectual experience.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless Michelangelo, moving to sketch the ceiling of
+the Sistine Chapel or the last panel of it, is carrying in
+himself the experience, the artistic experience of eighteen
+centuries. Yet he must have forgotten it all, at least as
+objective knowledge, to find it in himself flesh of his flesh,
+marrow of his bones, soul of his soul; so that he could
+move freely as an artist, in all the spontaneity and, therefore,
+liberty of creation. The character of his work is
+personal, so highly personal that it includes all the determinations
+which single out Buonarroti as a man of that
+land, of that religion and even of that particular moment of
+his religion, of that time, of such and such temperament
+and inclination, and singles out the whole of his production
+as belonging to that particular moment of the
+Italian Renaissance. The greater is the artist’s personality,
+the better he discharges his twofold function of microcosm
+and macrocosm of his world. It is an illusion of the nineteenth
+century to believe that personality in art makes for
+atomistic individualism. Just as it is an absurd error of
+the people who judge Mussolini and Fascism to believe
+that they have grown without roots. They would then be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>superposed to history, superfluous, unnecessary; whereas
+the great artist and the great politician belong to life, and
+in fact are historical life working itself out to expression
+or political realisation.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Storia della letteratura Italiana</i>, like an immense
+relief, unfurls the development of the life of Mind in Italy
+from the dawn of the Italian mentality right up to the
+days of the critic. For de Sanctis, Art is Mind individualising
+itself through the senses in the transparency of
+intuition; Art in other words, is life reaching the luminosity
+of form. This blending, this perfectly intimate welding
+of reason and sense, of universal and particular is Art.
+It is, therefore, individuality, not individuality taken as it
+is too often—as the contrary of universality, but as its
+realisation in the particular. For this relation of the
+universal and particular is constitutive of art, which is,
+therefore, neither individual arbitrariness, nor the mere
+reflection of life in the artist’s fancy, but life itself coming
+through its own development to intuitive transparency.
+Life cannot be a matter of which art would be the form;
+and religion, politics, science as elements of life are not
+alien to art or indifferent to it. None of this element can
+exist without art, and history leaves no doubt on the
+point—each new religion, new political system, new
+scientific progress is not to be parted from the artistic
+production of the time.</p>
+
+<p>De Sanctis, like a medical student, follows step by
+step the corruption of Italy, gradually growing with the
+decay of religious and political consciousness, above all
+when Humanism, having reached its climax in the works of
+Poliziano, stopped providing a sincere feeling to the
+scholars who ceased to worship antiquity some fifty years
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>after him. De Sanctis was a man of the Risorgimento he
+had laboured and suffered for the independence of his
+country, hoped and despaired of the future greatness of
+his countrymen. He was aware that in spite of Machiavelli,
+of Vico, of Alfieri, of Cuoco, of Mazzini, the greatest
+number of his countrymen had, so to speak, no souls.
+Knowing as he did that religion was the basis of all relation
+and the first cause of all real social progress, seeing in it
+the keystone of man’s recognition of the exterior world,
+he refrained in all his books from attacking not only
+religion, but the Church as well; although he was a
+staunch anti-clerical in politics until Rome was taken from
+the Pope. 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 byword, and the
+forces of reconstruction from Machiavelli onward. To the
+reading public he presented it as a mirror, in the transparency
+of Art showing the whole spiritual life of the
+people with its political consequences. He bade them
+realise that corruption had been the cause of foreign rule
+and tyranny, not foreign rule and tyranny the cause of
+corruption.</p>
+
+<p>This was new indeed, 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 corruption. No wonder, therefore,
+that de Sanctis’ masterpiece, published in 1871,
+should have been practically laid aside for more than
+twenty-five years awaiting Croce and Gentile to take it up.
+The public that responded to their call when it came was
+exactly the one which de Sanctis would have wished to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>reach. The boys took de Sanctis up, and what is more
+curious they took him as their idea-provider; inasmuch as
+the big volumes, which could not be included in the
+schools’ syllabus, were turned to in the hour of need, when
+they had to write essays and found themselves short of
+ideas. No method of popularising and assimilation could
+match this, for the ideas thus borrowed by the young had
+to be exposed, proved and illustrated. The school lads and
+university men who enlisted as volunteers in the war, were
+mostly spiritual sons of de Sanctis, one of them being
+Mussolini, who told the author that he was a worshipper
+of that work. In the same way the idea of Croce and
+Gentile have spread even among people unfit to realise
+their theoretical import. Never, however, could they
+spread like those of de Sanctis, but he is so much so completely
+their spiritual father that most of their speculative
+notions can be found as intuitions in de Sanctis’ pages.
+There the boys get so familiar with them that when they
+come to a Gentilian theory, and the teacher takes the
+trouble to introduce to them the fundamental intuition,
+they grasp it at once as a matter of course and wonder
+why the teacher should think it so difficult to explain, for
+instance, the intimate relation of thought and action, the
+necessity of religion and the like.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">
+    CHAPTER VIII
+    <br>
+    BENEDETTO CROCE
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Benedetto Croce’s opposition to Mussolini’s government
+is so well known that to include him among the
+precursors of Fascism may seem strange. 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
+mind. Hence the necessity of including Croce in this
+account of the pedigree of the tendencies which have been
+realised in politics by Benito Mussolini. This naturally
+does not imply that all the ideas acted upon by Fascists
+are to be found in the theories of Croce, but that certain
+needs of Italian minds, more or less consciously expressed
+during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had been
+formulated and worked out by Croce, who had either
+found them in de Sanctis or had developed them on lines
+suggested to him by that great critic.</p>
+
+<p>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
+mind. 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 nonsense. An
+ineffable poem is not a poem at all, a harmony defying
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>expression is not a harmony at all, a vision transcending
+colours and lines, shadow and light is not a vision at all.
+Italians had to be reminded of the necessity of being
+realistic; their greatness as well as the greatness of ancient
+Rome had always rested upon a sound sense of the relation
+between means and end. He described the Italian genius
+as a disposition rather to identify the end and means than
+to fit the end to the means. He enforced this claim, not
+only for artistic creation, but for historical researches or
+theoretical speculation as well. He had evidently realised
+the short-comings of men such as Gioberti and Rosmini.
+It was much better to start on particular problems with
+an adequate preparation, and develop them into speculative
+theories, than to start with an indifferent preparation
+on vital questions and come to inadequate conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>Now if there could be in history such a thing as good luck,
+the friendship of Croce and Gentile, their flourishing at the
+same time, could be considered the most wonderful piece
+of good luck for Italy. By luck, however, we usually mean
+a certain combination of circumstances escaping our
+attention. Moreover, their being contemporaries of
+Mussolini, the <i>one</i> man fit to create a political world
+capable of bringing into living reality their most difficult
+conceptions—very often, in fact generally, 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 Mussolini. 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 genius, speculative, political or
+artistic.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span></p>
+
+<p>Any and every practical activity, says Croce, implies
+theoretical activity, since no action can be performed
+without knowledge. This however is not to be separated
+from the action; for the two forms of the spirit are distinct,
+not separate. Thus in any action, while the practical
+activity is explicit, the theoretical activity which is
+knowledge is implicit; in fact they are <i>concomitant</i>. The
+man of thought can no more think than walk without
+using his will; the importance of the will is just as great
+for the thinker or the artist as it is for the so-called
+practical man. 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 truth.</p>
+
+<p>A distinction is, however, made by Croce between the
+knowledge required for a practical act, such as the disposing
+of a regiment of infantry for a review, and that of
+the philosopher or the artist. The one is an intuition, the
+other is a conception, and to make the ground of a volition
+you want both, for the combination is <i>historical</i> knowledge.
+There, obviously enough, Croce reveals himself a
+true son of Machiavelli, Vico, and de Sanctis. The
+Florentine secretary had been hinting as much when he
+insisted on the necessity of our knowing the <i>actual truth
+about things</i> (since <i>human things are always moving</i>), in
+order to govern <i>in harmony with the times</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This <i>historical</i> 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 history. To them, the
+natural realm of action being history, it was manifest
+that any knowledge or theory is liable to be acted upon
+only in so far as it is historical; and such knowledge
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>becomes, under the name of condition of fact, the ground
+of Croce’s conception of the necessity and liberty of man’s
+will.</p>
+
+<p>To the generally accepted ideas of means and end
+Croce was to bring a most radical change. First he proceeds
+to prove that what is known as the end, the purpose,
+or the aim is not to be distinguished from the will. When
+I wash my hands my purpose is obviously that I should
+have them clean; but then it is equally obvious that this
+means that I want them to be clean. Turning to the means,
+the washing of my hands in order to have them clean,
+supposes a condition of fact which means the availableness
+of soap and water, for I could not will to wash my
+hands if I had neither soap nor water. 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 clean. So
+that purpose and means are all included in my act of will,
+which is nothing more nor less than the actual act of
+washing my hands. If the situation of fact did not include
+soap and water I could at best <i>wish</i> to wash them, never
+<i>will</i> to do so.</p>
+
+<p>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 means.
+Thus the men of the Risorgimento had to vary their purpose
+and to reconsider the means to attain it after and
+before each campaign, having to take as their actual will
+only that the realisation of which was in harmony with the
+then actual situation of fact. So that we can say that their
+real will, the will which created modern Italy, was exclusively
+that general will which was individualised in
+their many splendid deeds of heroism or renunciations of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>their former plans or ideals; these had been formed
+without the historical knowledge which alone could
+make them realise what was the situation of fact.</p>
+
+<p>Now a good deal of admiration is usually bestowed
+on people of good-will and of pure intentions. Here, however,
+the very existence of such good-will, such pure
+intentions, is denied. 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 so.
+For he does not will to do so as long as he thinks it is
+impossible. A wish of this kind has no value either
+economically or morally. Whatever the circumstances,
+if he knows them well, 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 fire. When
+Machiavelli tried to form a Tuscan Militia to free Florence
+from her trouble, he did not succeed; but when he left his
+boisterous and rustic friends over their wine and retired
+to the small library of his modest villa, he did the only
+civic duty that was left to him to perform; he plunged
+his lancet into the corrupted body of his country and
+prepared the way for the coming centuries. Criticism,
+that is to say negative criticism, when the country is in
+danger, or suggestion as to the ideal thing to be done,
+unless they are part of a plan of reform so in keeping with
+facts that it can be immediately acted upon, are merely
+pretending to be acts of will. I cannot keep by my fireside
+or lean at my window deploring the things which are
+going on and pretend that “I will to alter them.”</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is often said that we can will the good in the
+abstract, while unable to will it in the concrete, and this
+means simply that we may have good intentions and yet
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>behave badly. The answer to this has been already given;
+it may be well, however, to state it once more. Willing
+in the abstract, willing without acting accordingly, is
+equivalent to not-willing, since, according to Croce, a
+volition implies a situation historically determined from
+which it arises as an act equally determined and concrete.</p>
+
+<p>The importance assigned in this theory to the knowledge
+of the actual situation of fact, and consequently to the
+historical judgment, invests with the greatest importance
+the possibility of error. Such possibility is, however,
+excluded by Croce from the theoretical realm of mind;
+for lack of knowledge, ignorance, is not error. It belongs
+to practical activity and we cannot err unwillingly. All
+errors are due to an interference of the will with our
+apprehension of reality; and as any volition is an assertion
+of our liberty we are responsible for it. Everyone
+knows that immoderate passions or illegitimate interests
+lead insidiously into error; that we err in order to be
+quick and finish, or to obtain for ourselves undeserved repose—that
+we err by acquiescence in old ideas, that is to say,
+in order not to allow ourselves to be disturbed in our repose,
+and to prolong it unduly, and so on. 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 will. It
+thus becomes perfectly legitimate and wise to use practical
+measures to induce those who err to correct themselves,
+punishing them when this can be of any use. Croce’s
+defence of the Holy Inquisition, be it of the old Romans
+against the Christians, of Catholics against heretics, or
+of Protestants against Catholics must not be found surprising.
+It is the logical conclusion of his view on the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>responsibility for error; and he is not to be found shirking
+the consequences of his system any more than the Fascists.
+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 activity. The necessity of having a
+single man responsible for anyone of the public services
+has been mostly realised in Anglo-Saxon countries; but
+where bureaucracy flourishes it is usually a Board, a
+Committee, in a word an anonymous body which takes
+decisions and steps for which nobody in particular is
+responsible. Therefore, to any complaint the answer must
+be “we thought; the committee held; it was generally
+supposed; the majority came to the conclusion ... that
+...” In such case nobody stands responsible; and each
+member of the Committee, or Board, throws on the others
+all the weight of the unhappy step or decision.</p>
+
+<p>With Croce’s theories such vagueness is destroyed at
+its root. The will of the people who take a step is their
+taking of the step, and both action and volition spring from
+their historical knowledge of the actual situation of fact.
+Such knowledge is therefore part of the action. The
+responsibility thus includes the assuming of the information
+necessary to the taking of the decision. Naturally
+this has always been the case, where man’s responsibility
+is really of importance. On board a ship, for instance, the
+officer in command has always known that his responsibility
+includes this knowledge. Ignorance of fact is the
+greatest fault whenever a decision has to be taken, whether
+the importance of the decision be great or small. This
+however, must not be held to imply the judging of an
+action according to its success. Historical judgments are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>not to be passed on the result of past actions; historical
+judgment must be passed on acts, not on facts.</p>
+
+<p>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 whole; and one
+might say that the action depends on the will of man and
+the event on the will of God. According to this theory
+the action of the man who shoots at Mussolini is the
+manifestation of his will, and his failure is the manifestation
+of God’s will; because the will of the whole,
+including the will of the chauffeur, who is driving Mussolini’s
+car, the wills of the people crowding the edge of the
+street, 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 idol, which are also volition-actions,
+determine the event; and this is usually termed
+Providence, or the rationality of history. Thus when
+foreigners, even those who do not approve of Mussolini’s
+government, and Italians, either religiously or coldly,
+repeat at each new attempt, “the hand of God is on his
+head,” the conviction which they express is perfectly in
+keeping with Croce’s view, and is by no means equivalent
+to fatalism.</p>
+
+<p>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 universe. 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 works. This double contribution of
+Italy to the conception of conduct, if not an entirely
+new idea of liberty, provides two very original views on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>that problem, one of those which have always tormented
+humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The first great step made by Croce was the consequences
+of his having denied any possible distinction between the
+volition and the action; for thus he was able to assert
+the oneness of liberty. We must no longer speak of a
+liberty of will and a liberty of action.</p>
+
+<p>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 1542 and found after the tumult on the
+top of a church-tower. The terror had aroused in him such
+a will that he had climbed there. As a rule the paralytic
+does not will because he knows he cannot, what he can
+do at the most is to wish that he was in a different condition.
+It is quite inexact to say that he who is threatened
+and yields to the threat is deprived of his freedom of
+action. The old formula <i>coacti tamen volunt</i> says as much.
+Whenever people have been clamouring for greater freedom
+of action, what they really wanted was to have the
+conditions of fact altered. “Everyone knows,” says
+Croce,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_6_6" href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> “that no <i>vultus instantis tyranni</i> can extinguish
+the freedom of the soul; no ruler, be he ever so strong
+and violent, can prevent a rebellion, or when all else fails,
+a noble death outwardly affirming the freedom
+within.”</p>
+
+<p>Every step onward in Croce’s theories is admirably
+consequent upon the statements that have preceded it.
+As man in his theoretical activity apprehends the world
+and by knowing it makes it his, so through practical
+activity he collaborates in its creation. The second being
+grounded in the first, a will independent of knowing is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>unthinkable. The blind will is not will; the true will has
+eyes.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_7_7" href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Without this it would be difficult to see how actions
+could be both free and necessary. Indeed one can say that
+up to these Italian theories all the contentions on liberty
+were waged between two tendencies, one leading to the
+ever-recurrent conclusions of Determinism, the other to the
+assertion of free will. 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 volition.</p>
+
+<p>Volition thus is not considered as arising in the void,
+but in a definite situation, under definite historical conditions,
+in relation to an event which cannot be eliminated.
+When the situation changes the act of will changes. This
+amounts to saying that it is necessitated by the situation
+in which it arises. But it also means that such act of will
+is free. For it does not make one with the situation, neither
+does it produce a duplicate of it. The volition-action
+produces something different, that is, something new;
+therefore it is initiative, creation, an act of freedom.
+Were it not so, a volition would not be an act of will and
+reality would not change through the action of men, it
+would not become, would not grow upon itself.</p>
+
+<p>“This consciousness of necessity and liberty inseparably
+united is found in all men of action, in all political
+geniuses, who are never inert or reckless: they feel themselves
+at once bound and not bound; they always conform
+to facts, but always rise above them. The fatuous,
+on the other hand, oscillate between the passive acceptance
+of the given situation and the sterile attempt to overleap
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>it, that is, to leap over their own shadow. They are consequently
+now inert, now rash. They, therefore, do not fix
+or conclude anything, they do not act; or, if they do, it
+is always according to what of the actual situation they
+have understood, and what of initiative they have displayed.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_8_8" href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>If Benedetto Croce had been a prophet he could not
+have better contrasted Mussolini’s way of proceeding,
+always surrounded by experts and never the slave of
+data, with the way in which former governments proceeded
+in Italy, when ministers thought that by the grace
+of the people they had received some sort of super-natural
+light to discharge their duty. No practical activity could
+have been as vigorous as the theoretical reaction of Croce
+and Gentile against the futility, the abstractness, the
+pessimism, and above all the materialism that were slowly
+but surely destroying the third Italy! But their joint
+philosophical campaign, however brilliant it may have
+been, could not arouse the working masses to the new
+gospel of civic life. This had to be undertaken by a man
+of faith, endowed with the gifts that make the statesman
+and the popular leader. 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 action. The situation of fact is the same for
+all three, and they therefore arise for the same purpose
+although they endeavour to realise it through very
+different means.</p>
+
+<p>Since man’s action, his volition-action, is free, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>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 not. Thus again the character of responsibility
+is emphasised in all human actions. Croce objects very
+strongly to the way in which criminal lawyers put a poor
+madman on a level with the guilty, for he who is mad is
+partially dead. Practical good and evil can be now
+identified with will and anti-will, with freedom and anti-freedom,
+with the reality of the will and its unreality.
+For evil, when real, does not exist save in the good, which
+opposes and conquers it; it is, therefore, merely the negative
+of good, and it would be impossible to find an act of
+will distinctly willing that which is evil as such. A man
+may want to intoxicate himself with alcohol, 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 cares. Hence that which he expects from drink is
+good. Such negativity of evil has always been current
+among theologians even before the days of Thomas
+Aquinas; but the theory deduced by Croce from it is
+quite original.</p>
+
+<p>All practical activity is either economic, or both economic
+and moral. The economic activity is that which wills
+and effects only what corresponds to the condition of fact
+in which a man finds himself; the ethical activity,
+although it corresponds to these conditions, is that which
+transcends them.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, any act of the individual’s will is economic,
+but to be moral it must be an act of the universal will.
+The former is judged by the greater or less coherence of the
+action in itself, the other by its greater or less coherence
+in respect to the universal end which transcends the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>individual. No act can be moral without being economic,
+for however universal it may be in its meaning my action
+must be mine in order to be something concrete and individually
+determined. In practical life we do not meet with
+morality as a universal, but always with a determinate
+moral volition. On the other hand, it is easy to see that
+our actions always obey a rational law, even when moral
+law is suppressed; so that, when every inclination that
+transcends the individual has been set aside, it is necessary
+to will this or that coherently, not to oscillate between two
+or more volitions at the same time. And if we succeed in
+really obtaining our desire, if, while the moral consciousness
+is for the moment suspended within us, we abandon
+ourselves to the execution of a project of vengeance and
+execute a masterpiece of ability, even when, in this case,
+human society does not approve, we for our part feel
+satisfied, at least so long as the suspension of the moral
+consciousness lasts; for we have done what we wanted to
+do, we have tasted, though but for a little while, the pleasure
+of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>The economic form of activity we easily recognise as
+individual, hedonistic, utilitarian, and economic; the
+moral form is just as easily identified. To be moral, an
+action must first satisfy us as individuals occupying a
+definite point of time and space, and must also satisfy in
+us the transcendental being who defies time and space.
+Croce having made this distinction absolutely clear,
+could face the question concerning the nature of law.</p>
+
+<p>To him law is a <i>volitional act</i> concerning a <i>class</i> of actions.
+Therefore, where the volitional element or the element of
+class is wanting, there cannot be law. Obviously, however,
+the law is abstract; the act of will is, according to Croce,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>always of the individual, and the element of class is sufficient
+to deprive the law of anything like concrete life, be
+it an individual law or a social law. Since the freedom of
+human actions is logically bound up with his notion of
+practical activity, it is impossible to object that there is
+an essential difference between the programme of life laid
+down by any single man for himself, the programme of
+action laid down by any association, and the laws laid
+down by the state, the first being merely a matter of acceptance
+and the last relying on compulsion. Indeed, it is
+obvious enough that by compulsion one usually means the
+alternative of complying with the law or facing a penalty.
+Such alternative is the ground of a choice, and the citizen
+usually chooses, but always freely chooses, to obey the
+law rather than endure the penalty. The fact that some
+men do rebel is sufficient to prove that freedom cannot be
+abolished by compulsion.</p>
+
+<p>Then what is the essential difference between individual
+and social law? An attempt is usually made to differentiate
+them by saying that the latter has emanated from and
+is sustained by a <i>supreme power</i>. But where is the seat of
+this supreme power? Surely not in anything like a super-individual,
+dominating individuals. It is only to be found
+in the individuals themselves. And in this case its power
+and value correspond with the power of the individuals
+who compose it; it is the law of a circle empirically considered
+to be larger and stronger, but whose will is law in
+so far as the individuals composing it spontaneously conform
+to such a will, because they recognise the convenience
+of doing so. Monarchs who believed themselves to be all-powerful,
+have realised at certain moments that their
+power rested in a universal consensus of opinion, failing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>which their power vanished, or was reduced to a gesture
+of solitary command, not far from being ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>Going back to the definition of laws as <i>volitional</i> acts
+concerning classes of actions, Croce shows that the so-called
+laws of nature or of grammar are no laws at all,
+because the act of will is lacking in them. Neither is the
+jurist, quietly elaborating rules from cases, a legislator.
+His excogitations will have to wait for a man of will, who
+alone, and <i>sword in hand</i>, will endow them with the character
+of law. On the other hand the so-called moral law,
+economic law, are no laws at all inasmuch as they lack
+the element of class! “Will the good,” “Will the true,”
+“Will the useful,” are all statements in which a volition
+is expressed, but then the object of such will is invariably
+the <i>universal</i>, whereas laws have for object something
+<i>general</i>; a <i>class</i>, not a concept. In short moral law,
+logical law, or economic law ought to be called principles
+instead of laws.</p>
+
+<p>The character of laws being general and not universal,
+is perfectly in keeping with their mutability; since actual
+conditions are constantly changing. It is necessary to add
+new laws to the old, to retouch these or to abolish them
+altogether. Philosophically speaking, there is but one
+cause of changing the laws, viz., the will that in its liberty
+produces the new law in new conditions of fact. The
+question whether we should recognise Conservatism or
+Revolution as the fundamental concept of practical life,
+does not concern Croce in the least. For him every Conservative
+is also Revolutionary, since he is always obliged
+to adapt to the new facts the law that he wishes to preserve.
+Every Revolutionary is also a Conservative, since
+he is obliged to start from certain laws that he preserves,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>at any rate provisionally, that he may change others and
+substitute for them new laws, which he in his turn intends
+to preserve. Cavour, to use Croce’s own example, was a
+Conservative in respect of certain problems, and revolutionary
+in respect of others, to such a degree that he
+seemed to the Mazzinians to be a Conservative and to the
+clericals and legitimists a Revolutionary.</p>
+
+<p>The demand for an eternal code, a universal, rational,
+or natural justice, in its claim to fix the transitory, is in
+open contradiction with the historical and, therefore,
+contingent character of laws. Were Natural Law permitted
+to enforce itself once for all we should witness, with
+the formation and application of the eternal code, the
+cessation <i>ipso facto</i> of Development, the end of History,
+the death of Life and the dissolution of Reality. Such
+an end of the world cannot take place because, if it is
+possible to develop theories which are in contradiction
+to life, it is quite impossible to make them concrete and
+actual: God, that is to say Reality, does not allow this to
+be done. Of such theories the best examples are surely
+Absolute Monarchy and Communism. Both as an ideal
+present themselves as an absolute, a perfect form of government
+and, therefore, would be, if realised, the end of life.
+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 institutions,
+and from the new needs the new projects which will
+bring about new institutions.</p>
+
+<p>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 passing, such as the improvement of working-class
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>conditions, both materially and intellectually, is
+indeed what should have been its real aim. But Providence
+permits men to act upon their own motives; and
+well it may, since the will of the whole can always have
+the last word. Communists have done all they that have
+in the belief that it was done only in the process of getting
+nearer to their ultimate aim, the abolition of classes. The
+kings of France who, little by little, destroyed the Feudal
+order, and by so doing brought about the unification of
+France and the rise of the <i>bourgeoisie</i>, may have thought
+that they were merely working for the establishment of
+an absolute monarchy. Their real work, that is to say
+the task which was laid out for them by Providence, 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
+vassals. But when this was achieved the absoluteness in
+their conception of monarchy was bound to be the cause
+of its fall. For had it been possible it would have meant
+the cessation of development. A form of government if it
+is absolute is perfect, and it is the imperfection which calls
+for further development. Now Communism makes the
+same mistake when aiming at bringing about so perfect
+a society that it would not even need a government. If this
+came to be it would be the end of the world.</p>
+
+<p>But this is anticipating Mussolini’s realisation of the
+fact, and it may be sufficient to state that Croce’s ideas,
+stated here together, were scattered explicitly in several
+essays published between 1897 and 1900, and collected
+for the first time in 1907 while they were implicitly
+pervading the whole of his own writings and those of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>innumerable journalists as well as running on the lips
+of the Professors who taught in upper schools and
+universities.</p>
+
+<p>On this point of the essential mutability of laws and
+institutions, Croce lays a great stress. “We often meet in
+history with projects of new laws which are said to be
+better than the old, or good by comparison with those
+judged more or less bad, the new ones being proposed as
+<i>natural</i> or <i>rational</i> justice, whilst the old ones are rejected
+as unnatural or irrational, just as passionate erotic temperaments,
+uninstructed by the experience of their past,
+believe with the utmost seriousness that their new love
+will be constant and eternal. Such ‘Natural laws’ are
+historical, are transitory, like all others. All men know
+how, in certain times, and places, religious tolerance,
+freedom of trade, private property, constitutional monarchy,
+have been proclaimed eternal, and in other times
+and places the extirpation of unbelievers, commercial
+protection, communism, the republic and anarchy.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_9_9" href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>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 law. Nothing can be
+farther from truth. His contention was that laws being
+manifestations of man’s will must change with the
+changes in facts. The ideas of the eighteenth or nineteenth
+century can no longer be a living reality. The reality
+which he denies to the law itself he recognises as belonging
+to the single act done under the law, that is to say to the
+execution of the law. The indubitable truth, as to the
+necessity of acting in each case according to historical
+necessities, has induced people at different times and in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>different places, to proclaim the sheer uselessness of law.
+Benedetto Croce is most definitely against such theories.
+According to him, the best arguments to be used against
+them can be drawn from history itself, 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 times. The necessity of laws,
+ordinances, justice, and the state, appears at all points of
+human history. Better a bad government than no government
+at all; and those who declaim against laws can
+well do so at their ease, for the law surrounds, protects,
+and preserves their life for them.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">
+    CHAPTER IX
+    <br>
+    GIOVANNI GENTILE
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The difference between the philosophies of the two greatest
+thinkers now flourishing in Italy is due to the natures
+of their minds. Croce always starts from a distinct problem,
+from a particular question, and rises to speculative
+heights partly through the vigour of his own genius and
+partly through his constant intercourse with Gentile, to
+whom any particular problem always presents itself from
+the outset <i>sub quadam specie Æternitatis</i>. On the other
+hand, Gentile starting thus, 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 Aquinas, by his vast
+erudition not only in the history of philosophy, but in the
+whole historical world. Yet, even apart from this, and
+from his special interest in all the problems of Law and
+pedagogy, the influence of Benedetto Croce always
+compels Gentile to keep in touch with actual reality.
+Their mutual criticism is perhaps the best example in
+philosophical history of the creative power of the critic.
+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 theory.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span></p>
+
+<p>The import of Croce’s work is certainly more easily
+grasped than Gentile’s ideas as they present themselves
+in his theoretical world. Many Italians are acting on these
+ideas of Gentile’s who would be unable to formulate them;
+and that is the most remarkable thing about them. He
+became a professor at the age of twenty-one, exactly
+thirty years ago, 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 writings, but also by the number and fervour
+of the disciples he has attracted. A born teacher, he loves
+teaching, and in teaching has acquired much of his knowledge
+of mind. He never divorces theory from the concrete
+ground of life; and when he addresses people between
+17 and 60 years of age he is constantly forcing them
+to test in their own actual life the truth of what he is
+saying.</p>
+
+<p>He strongly dislikes the taking of notes; for he does
+not want the students to repeat his own words on the day
+of their examination. The lectures are only meant to help
+them to take their bearings, to enlighten them; they
+must read their set books by themselves and interpret
+them by their own wits. His words must be taken as an
+invitation to think out their own problems for themselves;
+he wants to spur them on, not to solve problems for them.
+Thousands of schoolmasters are actually following his
+pedagogy which so perfectly meets the requirements of
+the present generation, that it is admirably acted upon
+in the remotest villages and by people whose philosophy
+is that of commonsense and good-will. Gentile has produced
+not only a system of philosophy, but determined
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>a current of spiritual life which partakes both of theory
+and practice—blending them perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>Just as Bruno, Bacon and Descartes opened the era
+of subjectivism, individualism and liberty, 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 self, since his subjectivism
+becomes concrete and capable of realising the object.
+This sounds somewhat abstruse and a few illustrations of
+the point at issue may be useful.</p>
+
+<p>Fuel is not fire, and in order to warm myself, fire is the
+thing I need. But the fuel is necessary to the fire. The
+fire, indeed, <i>is</i> only so far as it consumes the fuel. Both are
+necessary; yet it is the fire which makes the fuel; since
+the coal, wood, or charcoal is fuel merely because the fire
+can destroy it as such. But the fire does not exist before
+it starts to consume the fuel. Now in knowledge the thing
+man knows is not knowing, it is known; therefore, the
+principle of knowledge is man. But can man know, in the
+absence of that which he knows? Obviously not. Shall
+we then go back to the old dualism and take man and the
+world, the subject and the object, as standing in opposition
+again? No; 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 it. The one
+single source of <i>spiritual</i> reality is man; but he realises
+the world only in so far as he realises himself as a knowing
+subject. And just as fire is fire as long as it destroys the
+fuel; so man is really man, a spiritual being, a subject as
+long as he acts as such. The point is often explained by
+practical illustration to quite tiny children, to whom no
+one would try to state it, as I have just done, theoretically.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span></p>
+
+<blockquote style="padding-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;">
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Why do you come to school?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Because my mother sent me (—or—to learn to
+read and write.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: If you come because your mother sent you, that
+is quite right; but until you see for yourself why you
+should come to school, you will get very little good out
+of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: But since I have got to come, I want to learn.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: And what do you suppose all the others come
+for?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Why, sir, to learn.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: And tell me, what must I do if you are all to
+learn?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: I suppose you must teach us.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Well now, what is a school?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: This is a school.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: You mean the building?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Yes, of course.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Don’t you think I could teach and you could
+learn in a field?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Well, I suppose we could.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Would that be a school? (No answer). It
+would. You see the building and the writing over the
+door have nothing to do with it. <i>We</i> make the school.
+For if to-morrow the authorities were to send us to a
+barn and put some poor people here——</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span> (interrupting): Sir, I know, it would be a poorhouse.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: And the barn where we went?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: It would be the school.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Right. Then who makes the school?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: The teacher and the pupils.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Right. But let us go on talking about the same
+case. The authorities say that this place must be given
+up to house poor old people. Now I think that a lot
+of strong boys like you could carry the benches, blackboard
+and so on to the barn.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Of course we could.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: And I might say to you: “Come this afternoon,
+all of you, and let us do it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Very well, we would come, at least those who live
+near.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: And we would start teacher and pupils together,
+carrying the things.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Yes, sir.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Would that be a school?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Of course not, sir.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Then it is not enough to have pupils and
+teacher together to make a school.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: No, sir.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: What is missing, then?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Why, sir, we carry benches and things, and that
+is not a school.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Well, what exactly is a school?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: ... I don’t know.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: I’ll tell you. It is my teaching and your learning
+that makes a school. Do you see?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Oh, yes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: But if it is actual teaching and learning that
+make a school, what happens if the master is a bad
+master and does not actually teach anything?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Well ... I suppose it is not a real school ...</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: It is not a school at all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: I see.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Now if a boy does not want to learn at all——</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: He is a bad pupil.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: He is not a pupil at all, as long as he persists
+in not learning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Of course he is not.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: And if he makes a noise and prevents the others
+from learning, what then?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: He oughtn’t, sir.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: I know he oughtn’t. But if he does not see that
+he oughtn’t, and goes on doing it, what happens?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: He prevents the others from learning and the
+master from teaching.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Very good, and what is the result for the
+school, if, as you see, it is the actual teaching and learning
+which makes the school?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: It is just as before, when the Master was bad,
+it stops being a school.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Now supposing you didn’t mind being punished
+rather than keep still, could you start singing or
+jumping about just to be funny?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Well, no, not even if I did not mind being sent
+out, I couldn’t.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: Do you know why?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pupil</span>: Because I should spoil your teaching and their
+learning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>: And you would destroy the school.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In such a discussion, which may occupy several days or
+weeks, the child has obviously learnt some rules of life
+derived from highly speculative notions. The reality of
+any relation depends on two acts directed towards a common
+aim; therefore, the rights of the two parties are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>dependent upon their actual efficiency in the pursuit of
+the common aim. A master who does not teach must be
+dismissed; a pupil who does not learn loses the right of
+being a pupil. Similarly, if a landowner allows the ground
+to lie waste, he is not discharging his duties as a landowner
+and his rights to his property are not actual. This stands
+in complete contrast with the “Rights of Man” which
+could assert man’s liberty to use his property as he chose,
+the state only calling upon its citizens to pay taxes—and
+fight in war, because the state was understood as something
+external to the citizens. The relation between employer
+and employed is clearly parallel to that between
+master and pupil; in it the common aim is to realise as
+much profit as possible out of the enterprise. As soon as
+one of the parties diminishes the productivity of the enterprise,
+he forfeits his right to damage himself, the other
+party and the commonwealth. The state, though having
+no direct shares in the profit is enriched or impoverished
+according to the increased or decreased productivity of
+private enterprises.</p>
+
+<p>In this is stated for the first time since Christ preached
+and lived the Gospel, the true equality of men that had
+been asserted in it. So thoroughly does Christianity realise
+that rights are correlative to duties, that before spiritual
+citizenship can be bestowed on a child in most Christian
+churches sponsors are required to take a pledge in its
+name, and upon its coming to adult state the young
+Christian must confirm that pledge and acknowledge the
+duties on which its rights depend.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_10_10" href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> This is the reason why
+the Roman Catholic Church is at once democratic and
+hierarchical. A shepherd can become Pope, an Emperor
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>can be deprived of his spiritual citizenship. The view of
+citizenship as a birthright is a relic of Paganism when
+slavery might be the predestined fate of some and citizenship
+of others. Political reality finally becomes spiritual
+reality; man is a citizen exactly in so far as he realises
+the state, through the act of consciousness by which,
+transcending the empirical element in his own will, he
+postulates such a will in religious objectivity, thereby
+making it law.</p>
+
+<p>The little boy, in realising that his purpose in going to
+school is to learn, transcends everything in his will that
+is merely individual or private. His will ceases to be subjective,
+it becomes greater than the little boy, it becomes
+school life, it becomes objective and transcending the
+little boy, it is to him <i>Law</i> in all the majesty and imperativeness
+of the term. Again, boys become members of a
+football team because they want to play and eventually
+win matches. They want this freely and this choice, together
+with their individual skill in the game, produces the
+team as a unit for the purposes of play. But the team once
+formed, the captain chosen for his fitness to command the
+team in such a way as to increase its efficiency, and each
+member called to perform the part in which he can best
+serve the team’s interest, the act of will by which each
+member in perfect liberty wants to win a match transcends
+itself, become the team’s will, and as such, objective,
+sacred, inviolable law. The instances in which members
+of a team, disregarding the orders of the captain (in whom
+the eleven wills in all their liberty fuse into one and
+become law), play to show off their personal skill illustrate
+clearly enough by their effect on the score, the inviolableness
+of such collective will.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span></p>
+
+<p>To realise the full force of this relation between liberty
+and law, the state and the citizen, is not easy, if one looks
+for it exclusively in Gentile’s philosophy of law; but his
+pedagogy makes it far easier and his lectures perfectly
+easy. There is something religious about it which pervades
+the whole of his philosophy as it pervades Fascism.</p>
+
+<p>The child is brought to realise what he is by looking
+at the various societies which co-operate in making him
+what he is. Being asked what he would say, If somebody
+meeting him in America asked him what he was and who
+he was, what would he say? He usually answers to such a
+question that he would say: “I am so-and-so,” but he is
+then asked: “What does that mean?” which brings the
+child to realise that the meaning of his name is that he is
+the son of his father and mother, he is what he is first of
+all as belonging to his particular family. Again: “I am
+so-and-so” conveys but little to a perfect stranger. What
+would he say next. “I am an Italian.” Very well, and
+“what kind of man in Italy?”... The child here usually
+pauses in great perplexity. It takes some time before he
+comes to speak of a possible profession and of his religion;
+and for this last point it is necessary to point out to him
+that there are several religions. Once he has got there,
+however, 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 ideas. The author has had the opportunity
+of noting how easily children grasped the true nature of
+their relation to family, country, religion, and school, and
+the fact that what they were depended on their consciousness
+of being a living member of such societies. The child
+thus acquires a religious attitude towards them. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>realises the sacred character of the family, as based solely
+upon his own moral realisation of his relation to the members
+of his family. The family blood running in his veins,
+he is told has nothing to do with that relation. His father
+is his father in the spiritual way which alone binds them
+together, because he calls him his son and acknowledges
+paternal relationship to him with all the duties and claims
+that it involves. 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-self; and that such societies are
+merely the various consciousness of single members
+transcending their poor, limited, empirical little selves
+and calling into existence their better and greater, transcendental
+selves. Man as a thing-in-itself is nowhere to
+be found; mankind vanishes like a phantom as soon as
+you try to meet it. If every man and boy in the world
+discharged his duty as a member of a family, of a school,
+of a club, of a calling, and finally of a church and of a state,
+mankind would certainly know peace and well-being, for
+man then would consider his relations, school, club and
+trade fellows, religious brethren and fellow citizens as
+belonging to his own self. But no man can do so perfectly,
+and it is as much as can be expected from him if he
+does what, in the sincerity of his soul, 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 self. The
+speculative ground of such a conception of life must be
+briefly stated before coming to the idea of Liberty and Law,
+and to that of citizen and state.</p>
+
+<p>Spiritual reality is not Mind plus some spiritual fact;
+it is purely and simply Mind as subject, since any spiritual
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>fact must be resolved in the real activity of the subject,
+who knows it. Common language expresses this by saying
+that to know something thoroughly we must make it our
+own. Strictly speaking we know no others. If we know
+them and speak of them they must be within us. To
+know is to identify, to overcome otherness as such. As
+long as we feel ourselves confronted by the spiritual existence
+of others as different from ourselves, something from
+which we must distinguish ourselves, something which we
+presuppose as having been in existence before our birth,
+it is merely a sign that we are not yet realising the
+spirituality of their existence. To us they are still nature.</p>
+
+<p>This doctrine would be absurd if it were not considered
+in the light of Gentile’s notion of the transcendental and
+empirical selves, both meeting in man, as a concrete
+person in whom the infinity of the transcendental individualises
+itself through the finiteness of the empirical.
+The transcendental ego being one and the empirical egos
+being multiplicity itself, it is obvious that the <i>differences</i>
+are as necessary to the identity as the fuel to the fire. It
+is, indeed, through the process of transcending empirical
+differences that man asserts the transcendental character
+of mind.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously all the difficulties of moral problems arise
+from an empirical conception of man and his relations to
+others. Empirically I am an individual, and as such in
+opposition not only to all material things, but equally to
+all the individuals to whom I assign a spiritual value, since
+all objects of experience, whatever their value, are not only
+distinct but separate from one another in such a way that
+each, by its own particularity absolutely excludes from
+itself all the rest. All moral problems arise from experience
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>and arise precisely because of the absolute opposition in
+which the ego, empirically conceived, 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 world. This
+means that moral problems arise in so far as we become
+aware of the unreality of our being, as an empirical ego,
+opposed to other persons and surrounding things, and in
+so far as we come to see that our own life is actualised in
+the things opposed to it. But though this is the situation
+in which moral problems arise, they are solved only when
+man comes to feel another’s needs as his own, and thereby
+finds that his own life means that he is not closed within
+the narrow circle of his empirical personality, but is ever
+expanding in the activity of a mind superior to all particular
+interests and yet immanent in the very core of his
+personality. It must never be forgotten, however, that
+the reality of the transcendental ego, far from destroying
+the empirical ego, implies it.</p>
+
+<p>Passing to the essential characteristics of what might
+be opposed as spiritual to what is natural, we find Gentile
+working out the distinction from the fact that anything
+natural, such as a stone, <i>is</i> whilst anything spiritual,
+mind, a work of mind, a political constitution <i>becomes</i>.
+Mind and being are opposite terms. A plant <i>is</i>, an animal
+<i>is</i>, in so far as all the determinations of the plant or animal
+are a necessary and <i>pre-ordained consequence</i> of its nature.
+All the manifestations by which their nature is expressed
+are already there, existing implicitly. The empirical manifestations
+of their being come to be conceived, therefore,
+as closed within limits already prescribed as impassable
+boundaries. In the natural world everything is pre-ordained
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>according to the law of Nature, or, to use
+Gentile’s own words, everything <i>is by Nature</i>. In the
+spiritual world nothing <i>is by Nature</i>, but it becomes what it
+becomes through the activity of mind. Nothing is ever
+ready-made; nothing can be finished and complete. The
+social position of a family, the political system of a country
+can never be settled once for all; the members of the
+former and the citizens of the latter must go on creating
+it day by day and hour by hour. So is it with moral life.
+All the noblest achievements of the past do not diminish
+one whit the sum of duties still to be performed. The
+minute man stops realising in the inmost recesses of his
+consciousness what he must do for his family, for his
+country, or even for the firm to which he belongs, the
+family will be decadent, the country will begin to lose
+what his predecessors had painfully won, the firm will feel
+the incipient decay of a credit acquired through work and
+sacrifice. Nothing is ever done once for all; morally,
+intellectually, politically, socially, economically, everything
+is always to be done.</p>
+
+<p>A hard gospel to preach when man is accustomed as he
+is now to hear only the proclamation of his rights. Sacrifice,
+self-denial is here pointed out as the way to greater
+conquests and to the assertion of a nobler and more
+powerful self. To find spiritual reality man must seek it
+and, seeking it, create it. This means that it never confronts
+him as an external reality. If man wants to find it
+he must work to realise it. So long as it is sought it is
+found, so long as it is being conquered or constructed it
+is to be found, so long but no longer. Empires show signs
+of incipient decay the moment the Empire builders stop
+building them, stop wanting to build them. Yet from this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>austere conception of life springs a beautiful notion of
+liberty, a splendid conception of man’s creativity.</p>
+
+<p>Gentile has had the courage to study closely, very
+closely, the old scholastic Doctors, thereby acquiring a
+deep and almost unerring sense of Christianity; whilst
+his familiarity with the problems of law and the works of
+the Humanists and the Renaissance, have marked him
+with characteristics that sometimes cause his hearers to
+hail in him a Father of the Church. All this notwithstanding
+there are many points of doctrine upon which he
+stands in contrast with the theologians.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Where Gentile speaks of thinking he invariably refers
+both to the act of the will and to the act of the intellect;
+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 rejected. The
+mind is not now intellect and now will; but is known now
+as intellect and now as will. It should be observed, however,
+that the creative will does not create a world that
+issues from it and exists independently of it; it is self-creative
+just as any judgment is first of all self-assertive.
+No act of man’s will is ever directed to something already
+realised; man always wants to do an action. For instance,
+wanting a new pair of shoes merely means wanting to
+buy, to have, to get, a new pair of shoes; and since we
+have seen that any action is self-assertion, man in any act
+of will is wanting to realise his own self. In consequence of
+the unity existing between him and the world, man’s purpose
+is never external to him. Man realising his own self:
+such is the nature of mind, dynamic and dialectic at once.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span></p>
+
+<p>This notion of dialectic enables us to meet law and
+liberty on their common ground, morality; spiritual
+reality is endowed with a life that is best called dialectic,
+inasmuch as it is never either completely positive or
+purely negative. Anything spiritual from the most intimate
+religious experience, down to any political form,
+family arrangement, or business establishment <i>is</i> so long
+as, not yet being, it strives to realise, to assert, to establish
+itself. Anything spiritual let us say, human, the moment
+it <i>is</i>, that is to say the moment it is accomplished, the
+moment it ceases to develop or establish itself, is dead or
+dying. Gentile uses even stronger language: he says outright,
+<i>as a reality it is absolutely</i> annihilated.</p>
+
+<p>For him, as for Kant, the law of man’s will is the end
+that determines each act of will; since to be moral the
+will must have in itself its own law and its own end. The
+word moral can here have but one equivalent, namely,
+spiritual, that is to say <i>possessing value</i>. Morality so understood
+is an attribute of the entire life of mind, which must
+have an absolute value—be it truth, beauty, or goodness—such
+value being meaningless if it does not correspond to
+an ought to be, imperative <i>hic et nunc</i> as a consequence of
+liberty. Moreover, this binding imperativeness is universal—for
+imperative means necessary, and there can be no
+necessity without universality.</p>
+
+<p>The good is, in conclusion, the value of man’s spirit in
+its dialectical actuality; it may be termed the most concrete
+form of spiritual reality. Any spiritual act is moral
+in so far as it is mind’s realisation; consequently the
+negation of morality cannot be understood without understanding
+this realisation, which is the spiritual process
+or development of mind as society. The good is development;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>and as such it implies evil as its negativity.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_11_11" href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> Light
+and shadow, good and evil; in both cases the second
+term is the negative of the first. And herein lies all the
+tragedy of mind. Spiritual life is a complex of light and
+shadow, a constant struggle of the particular with the
+universal. Negativity opposes itself to positivity, evil to
+good, as the <i>particular</i> to the universal. Yet it is through
+their conflict and opposition that spiritual life realises
+itself, and this realisation is entrusted to the individual,
+who in and through his very particularity is the agent of
+the universal will.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously, if we take man, the individual man, in his
+pure empiricalness, he can do nothing without superhuman
+help. But this notion of man, which is the ground
+of all the abstract forms of egoism, individualism and
+anarchy, is a mere fancy. No single man can so be deprived
+of the divine light of intelligence as not to know
+of his own existence as a person, as a self, and in the very
+act of knowing himself as such to assert what is universal
+in him. Man in short is universal in so far as he does not
+belong to nature, a pure object of knowledge, but is a
+subject. So that his moral law is nothing superadded to
+him <i>ab extra</i>, it is the life granted to him by Providence
+realising itself.</p>
+
+<p>This is a far cry from ordinary selfishness. From this
+point of view the <i>bellum omnium contra omnes</i> appears as
+the materialistic fancy of a man whose idea of the world
+was inferred from the idea of the body. Man’s body is in
+fact one among many. But man’s will in his opposition to
+other wills reveals his universality. That opposition which
+had been taken as proof of the plurality and radical particularity
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>of subjective will is insisted upon by Gentile as a
+proof of the unity and radical universality of such will.
+Men’s wills collide with each other, it is true, but they do
+so in the very attempt to enforce the claims of that in them
+which is universal. For will has not realised itself as
+long as it stands as one will face to face with another will
+or so many other wills. In such a position it appears as one
+among many, as accidental and particular, as having a
+law differing from that of the others; whereas it always
+claims to be Will, 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 will.</p>
+
+<p>The statement of this problem, the moral problem, is
+very difficult indeed, and from a misrepresentation of the
+relations between <i>my</i> will and <i>your</i> will and <i>his</i> will, arise
+conflict and war; but our conception of war is not complete
+if we consider it apart from the conception of peace.
+War is nothing but the realisation of peace, which is the
+reconciliation of a duality or plurality of wills in the Will.
+This is why war exists and why there are private interests
+conflicting in the plurality of wills. Such war and conflict,
+however, are due to the particularity of the wills and last
+as long as each of these wills insists on realising itself as
+universal, ceasing when they compose their differences
+and accept as the common will that which has manifested
+its universality through the conflict. A peace without war
+cannot be conceived, 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 being. Thus will is, and ever must be, <i>concordia
+discors</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span></p>
+
+<p>Whatever the social unit taken as an example—family,
+school, state, church—the reality of it is always in development
+and is intelligible only as a process. It never <i>is</i>, and
+always is, but only in so far as it realises itself in perfect
+liberty. This free realisation does not permit of the
+separation of its negativity from its positivity. In such a
+way, though realising itself as universal, 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 universalisation. A
+society that perfectly unifies its spiritual diversity,
+abolishing every sign of variety, has inevitably gone to
+pieces since it loses all the spiritual forces that made it
+alive. Gentile goes so far as to say that in fact it is already
+dead. It is the eternally recurring opposition of interests
+and wills that permits the dialectic and dynamic unity of
+life to pulsate in any social constitution. Consequently the
+particularity of the will—to be resolved in the universal—consists
+in its negativity, without which the assertion of
+the universal could not exist as an act, for it would be a
+mere fact, not something due to the act of man but just
+something which <i>is</i> by nature.</p>
+
+<p>There is no assertion of will which is not exclusion,
+suppression of its own negation. Thus society is empirically
+the agreement of individuals, and speculatively the
+realisation of will through an eternal process. Universal
+value is thereby identified as a process realising itself
+through the suppression of what is particular and negative.
+Society is not <i>inter homines</i>, but <i>in interiore homine</i> and it
+can exist between men inasmuch as all men are spiritually
+one man, with one single interest: the eternal <i>increment</i>
+of the patrimony of mankind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span></p>
+
+<p>Now <i>society</i> implies <i>authority</i>, a superior will imposed
+on the associated wills to unite them under a common law.
+Rousseau had conceived the state, the people as a passive
+body, reserving activity for the sovereign. Gentile having
+raised to speculative form the brilliant intuition that lies
+in the Contract, after having fully recognised it as Rousseau’s
+idea, now rejects his conception of the distinction
+between sovereign and subjects. What he actually denies
+is the passivity ascribed to the people, and the school is, as
+usual, the experimental ground of his notion.</p>
+
+<p>School is a form of spiritual association implying a
+teacher, lawgiver to his pupils. It is not the teacher, however
+that, through his authority, brings the pupils to
+accept truth; on the contrary it is truth that confers
+authority on the teacher. The <i>Ipse dixit</i> implies a great
+knowledge of the master’s familiarity with science.
+Whatever the ground on which we acknowledge an authority,
+the authority is such as a consequence of our
+<i>acknowledging</i> it; and all the theories and inquiries concerning
+the source of a higher authority are to Gentile
+vain prattling. For him it is quite obvious that, 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 it. Through this agency and this
+agency alone authority <i>becomes</i> law.</p>
+
+<p>Authority is invested in the spiritual self, the universal
+person, ultimately the only sovereign. This transcendental
+self is the transcendental law of which we have
+spoken as moral law, 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
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>and sovereign that can impose laws and make them
+acknowledged.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It is now easy to realise that, although Gentile was
+first known as a Hegelian, 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
+Aquinas, Kant and above all to Vico. 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 reality.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of his brilliant conception of dialectic
+Hegel’s intuition of Reality is not dialectical but intellectualistic,
+and therefore static. He realised that we
+do not conceive reality dialectically unless we conceive
+it as itself thought. But he distinguished the intellect
+which conceives things from the reason which conceives
+mind and his dialectic was in consequence a dialectic of
+thought, thought however being understood as the result
+of the act of thinking. Whereas to have a real dialectic,
+corresponding to the throbbing reality of life, what is
+wanted is a dialectic of thought, understood as the act of
+thinking. What has already been thought is as static as
+a stone. Hence the necessity in which Hegel found himself
+of separating thought and action, which led him to
+declare in the introduction to his philosophy of Right that
+Philosophy was a twilight bird, whose activity began at
+dusk when the day’s work was done. For Hegel a law in
+order to be imperative must be pronounced by something
+that is already in existence. But Reality in existence
+is nature. Hegel’s state belonging thus to static reality,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span>being a fact, not an act, the citizen is nothing in himself;
+all his reality come to him from the state. This does not
+mean that he is annihilated (both in Imperialism and
+Communism he is very highly cultivated), but is as the
+little wheel of a huge engine which is carefully oiled so
+that the machine may go the better for it. His end is
+the state’s end.</p>
+
+<p>Not so with Gentile. Reality, being really dialectical
+does not admit of a distinction between will and intellect.
+You do not act and then think about it. For life, natural
+or spiritual, is the reality: if theory, the activity of the
+intellect, is merely a contemplation of it, such theory
+is not even real. How can one think of something added
+to the real world? What could such an addition be?
+There is no way of conceiving knowledge except as
+a creation of the spiritual reality which is itself knowledge.
+If Reality is spiritual, in realising itself it creates both the
+will and the intellect. It is only through the empirical
+consideration of their manifestations that they can be
+distinguished; speculatively they are one and the same
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between the idea of a good action and
+a good action itself is a difference between two ideas.
+In the first case we mean the idea which is a content or
+abstract result of thought, but not the act by which we
+think it, and in which its concrete reality truly lies. And
+in the second we mean the idea, not as an object or content
+of thought, but as the act which realises a spiritual reality.</p>
+
+<p>The state can not be a fact, something already realised.
+It is the eternal process, the <i>instauratio regnum boni</i>
+always becoming, and dying to be realised by the consciousness
+of the individual in its own process of self-realisation.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>The state is indeed the moral reality of the
+individual, who to become a citizen realises himself transcending
+his empirical subjectivity. The state exists
+only in the hearts of men; it is the intellectual and practical
+activity of men realising themselves as spiritual reality.
+It is always being altered through the positive and negative
+manifestation of man’s moral will. Man is not and
+cannot be subject to the state, except in so far and in so
+far only as he is its creator. And creation means liberty
+no less than self-realisation means realisation of the not-self
+and therefore the law.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">
+    CHAPTER X
+    <br>
+    BENITO MUSSOLINI
+  </h3>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Now that we have traced both the political and philosophical
+antecedents of what is here called Fascism, since
+it expresses itself as such, but might perhaps as well be
+termed the political and philosophical coming of age of
+Italy as a great nation, we must turn to the man, whose
+lot it has been to embody such historical forces and bring
+them to actual realisation.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem rather rash to compare Benito Mussolini
+with Dante and some people may think it a profanation.
+Poetry and politics put on the same level; a man considered
+by many little better than an adventurer (and
+appearing as such in the biography written by a friend of
+his, Miss M. Sarfatti); the new constitution far from
+being complete and, Fascist legislation comprising with
+a very few great laws, a sequence of decrees suggestive
+of tyranny! Such a comparison must seem to some
+absurd, although it is a fact that just as Dante embodied
+in the Divina Commedia all the philosophy, all the arts
+and politics of mediæval Italy, Mussolini is now embodying
+in the new régime all that is great and good in modern
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>It may be held, in fact, that political deeds do express
+the life of minds just as forcibly as poetry, therefore that
+they do not stand in a position of æsthetic inferiority to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>the compositions of poets, unless one chooses to compare
+the politics of a decadent period to the poetry of a great
+period. It may also be held that “adventurer” is an
+epithet that befits better the Duce of Miss Sarfatti than
+the Uomo Novo of Antonio Beltramelli, in whose book
+the same Duce appears as the herald of an entirely new
+period of the life of Italy. And the present book is concerned
+exclusively with what may prove of lasting value
+in the laws of the government of Mussolini, and does not
+imply an approval of what may be objectionable in the
+actual methods of government; it takes the view that
+tyrannical decrees and the like are inherent in the revolutionary
+stage of the régime and temporary measures bound
+to disappear when that stage has been outgrown. Our
+sensible souls may be shocked when we feel the violence of
+the hatred with which Dante pursues his enemies right into
+Hell or Purgatory. Mussolini’s soul is just as sensible and
+modern as our own. Not only would he forbear from hating
+his dead adversaries, but he does not hate his enemies even
+during their life. He can speak of them with the greatest
+serenity and recall the time when they were his friends
+without losing his sense of fair appreciation. 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 Providence.</p>
+
+<p>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 work. Such
+facts are as mysterious as the nature of genius. Yet it may
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>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 mind; 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 action.</p>
+
+<p>Through the political realisation of what was potentially
+included in their political theories France and England
+have shared, as we have seen, the honour of being the
+champions of Liberalism and Radical Democracy, just as
+through the political elaboration of the theories of Kant,
+Fichte and Hegel, Germany has developed Imperialism
+and Communism. Now that such political institutions and
+systems of philosophy have given all that could be had out
+of them, Italy comes forward and opposes, to what her
+thinkers consider as being henceforth at best abstract
+subjectivism, another subjectivism which—being freed
+from the materialism, mechanism and naturalism, that
+persisted in thought and life of former generations, 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 Mind, and more specially with the activity of
+Mind. The individual, the subject to assert itself in the
+activity of mind must have an object. Self implies Not-self.
+Therefore, liberty implies law. The citizen implies
+the state. The employer, or the employed, implies the
+enterprise for the productivity of which one employs and
+the other is employed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span></p>
+
+<p>In short, after the objectivism of the late Middle Ages
+and Renaissance, after the subjectivism of the modern
+world, Fascism is the synthesis of both in politics, just as
+well as in philosophy, since, after the “everything through
+the force of privilege” of the former and the “everything
+through the force of numbers” of the latter, it comes and
+says “everything for everyone that shall deserve it
+through moral sacrifice and productive activity.” It tries
+to bring forward the Christian equality of men since it
+meets everyone on the basis of actual value. 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 neighbour, and his neighbour
+as himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mussolini, to whom we must always turn as the living
+expression of Fascism, 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 self. 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 men;
+it hopes that they may realise how intimately it is related
+to every citizen, 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 objectivity.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Mussolini, when he was still in his teens, used to sit up
+late in the inn kept by his father in Forli, and according
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>to a man who used to meet him there, he was even then
+wont to distress himself at the materialistic form which
+Socialism had taken in Italy. Day after day he would
+make the same objection, “It is all right,” he would say,
+“to better the economic conditions of the people, and
+you do better them. But I cannot help realising that they
+are losing more and more the spiritual life which was for
+them religion and tradition, without taking anything of the
+higher and nobler side of Socialism.” He had read Andrea
+Costa’s writings and was devouring the international
+classics of Socialism, besides his Mazzini, so often quoted
+by his own father and the Republicans of Forli, who had
+never read a page of the great idealist. The thought that
+people were getting more and more indifferent to everything
+but food or rest, was a nightmare to him. 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 religion. This may be noted in the
+articles he wrote as the editor of <i>La Lotta di classe</i> during
+the years 1910–1911. He is an orthodox Socialist, 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 English, a French, or a German
+Socialist leader of the same period. Here and there, however,
+a single sentence attracts the careful Italian reader,
+or the foreigner familiar with all the shades of the language.
+A personal accent is felt; there is an original idea in an
+original wording; and it is either a request that the party
+leaders should be experts and the members qualified
+artisans; or an appeal highly spiritual, and in a way
+deeply religious. There are witnesses to the fact that when
+he had been in the morning issuing an official prohibition
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>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 Socialism. “For this
+people,” he would say, “above all the women, <i>have no
+conception of life</i> at all, since we have deprived them of
+religion.”</p>
+
+<p>It would be, therefore, a profound mistake to see in
+Mussolini’s attitude towards the Church, and in the action
+of his government to reinstate religion all through life, a
+political move, intended to secure the support of the
+clergy. Religion is not a useful string on which he plays
+as the great artist he is, either to secure the support of the
+Catholics and their clergy, or to keep people quiet and
+insure their moral education. What he realised between
+1900 and 1912, through an intuition of genius, is that the
+people had no general notion whatever, no concept of
+what is life, never even realised that they could ask
+themselves such a question as: What is life, what is the
+world? and that religion was necessary to them.</p>
+
+<p>Mussolini firmly believes in the necessity of arousing
+strong religious conviction in the people of every class.
+He does so on ground provided to him by the example of his
+mother, by the result of his own observation and experience
+as a leader, and last, but not least by his reading of
+de Sanctis’s principal work. That great critic is, indeed,
+the one link between Vico, Croce, Gentile and Mussolini,
+whose genius was to create the political system in which
+their ideas receive practical realisation.</p>
+
+<p>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 formulated, so that
+its most ignorant followers go as far as to reject the possibility
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>of anything like an intellectual movement paving
+the way for them through the preceding generations,
+whilst they act all along in keeping with the spiritual
+atmosphere which that intellectual movement has developed
+and the ideas it has put in circulation. The reason of
+this lies in the æsthetic genius of Mussolini. Like the
+greatest artists produced by Italy, he is at once macrocosm
+and microcosm. The whole of Italy’s past, as in another
+Dante, converges in him. His avid personality takes it all
+in, 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 it.</p>
+
+<p>Now what Mussolini hopes to obtain from the recrudescence
+of religious life is that the people should get a
+wider outlook upon <i>Life</i> in the highest sense of the word.
+He never uses philosophical terms to express it; yet so
+highly speculative is the notion that Giovanni Gentile is
+probably the only philosopher to have worked it out, and
+whosoever did not believe in Providence could be convinced
+that Providence exists just by studying Croce,
+Gentile, and the way their work attains realisation at the
+hands of Mussolini without any previous arrangement.
+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 value, that
+man’s individual will is not by a long way the supreme
+law, that man’s individual circumstances are not in themselves
+by a long way constitutive of <i>Life</i>. All these aims he
+hopes to reach through religion.</p>
+
+<p>When he was a Socialist Leader he was struck by the
+immorality of women and by the cowardice of men. These
+would lay traps in which other people might lose their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>lives, as when they unscrewed the rails of the railway in
+the province of Forli, but they would not risk their own
+lives. Being at that time, a most orthodox Socialist he
+could not think: “let us stop this demoralising propaganda.”
+He believed that it would be all right in the end,
+when the end, with a capital E, should have come for
+this capitalist society based as it was on selfishness. He
+wanted a religion, and having then a mentality quite
+anti-historical, he really believed that he could give them
+a new religion if he could but find it. For this would make
+them realise, so he thought, that they did not count in
+themselves but only through their relations to others; and
+that to realise their better self, they must always look at
+the whole, which is nothing so long as single men are not
+conscious of belonging to it, 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 right. Obviously,
+this is man transcending his own self to assert it through
+the very negation of its empirical nature.</p>
+
+<p>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 here, in this intuitive
+mind of quite a young man, who knew nothing of
+Gentilian theories, working its way towards practical
+realisation. Before the way in which he was to proceed
+from this to the economic theories that <i>may</i> rid the western
+world of strikes and lock-outs one fact must be put in evidence.
+From what has been said above, 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 collectivity. He had at first not made
+out the import and the consequences of such a view. But the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>necessity of pleading his own cause, when he was tried in
+1911 by the Tribunal of Forli, for having ordered a strike
+of protest against the Tripoli war, put on his lips a declaration
+that must be taken into consideration whenever
+Mussolini’s “Imperialism” is in question. In the records
+of the tribunal he is stated to have pleaded his case,
+saying that he did not love his country less than the
+Nationalists did; the difference was between his idea of a
+country’s greatness and theirs. He thought that such
+greatness depended far more on the spiritual and economic
+level reached by the people of a country, than on its
+territorial extension, the number of its inhabitants, or the
+importance of its colonies. To argue that he has changed
+his mind on this as on other points would not be consistent
+with facts. Since his advent to power the efficiency
+of the army and navy has been brought to a higher
+standard, but their effective numbers have not been
+increased at all; whilst the greatest care and expense
+have been dedicated to the reform of education, nothing
+being spared that can promote a deeper consciousness of
+the individual, and an immense scheme is a foot to improve
+the intellectual and spiritual conditions of adults, involving
+huge expense by the government and great personal
+sacrifice by the intellectual and artistic classes.</p>
+
+<p>When Mussolini was in Forli he could not satisfy any
+of his realistic or idealistic exigencies. His intellectual
+position as a Socialist made him long for a paradise to
+come, a dream at best; his nature, like that of many in
+his province, made him long for actual facts. The position
+proved a difficult one and he was only kept going by the
+strength of his convictions which were most sincere. The
+man who was on his staff in the <i>Lotta di Classe</i> is still a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>workman and a Socialist; and speaks with as much regret
+for that time as with bitterness for Mussolini’s “desertion
+from the party,” a “desertion” which nothing will make
+him see as a consequence of the very sincerity to which he
+ascribes Mussolini’s power of fascination. 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 and,
+therefore, false was his position.</p>
+
+<p>The adversaries of the Socialists were continually reproaching
+them for having invented the class struggle.
+Just because he was absolutely sincere Mussolini minded
+the accusation very much. For if that was so the responsibility
+was indeed a heavy one. He started, therefore,
+looking in history for the origin of that struggle. And it was
+inevitable that his Italian mentality should, through the
+process of his researches, emerge in all its national and
+personal definiteness; that he should reject, more or less
+consciously, all that is not concrete and actual. The
+Italians usually call “historical” a true knowledge or
+realisation of a given situation of fact, whether past or
+present; again they call “historical” the vision of life
+as the eternal alteration of such situations through a
+process which knows no regress.</p>
+
+<p>To his relief Mussolini soon found out that the class
+struggle had existed always and everywhere, and that it
+was due to social and financial differences: and this
+cheered the convinced Socialist in him. His next step was
+to realise that not only had such a struggle existed in
+Rome, in Athens, and elsewhere, but that it was actually
+the main cause of social progress. And with this the
+Socialist triumphantly exulted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span></p>
+
+<p>The triumph was a short one, however, and the cause
+of this exultation was to prove a mortal blow to his
+Socialist faith. If class struggle was the main agent of
+progress and class differences the cause of such struggle,
+there could be no progress, no movement, when class
+differences had been abolished. So painful was the conclusion
+that he must have tried to reject it. When classes
+should be abolished, every thing would be for the best,
+granted that it could come to be.</p>
+
+<p>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 exist, that
+perfection cannot exist, 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 arise. Obviously, it is
+by the inconvenience of an actual law that the next law
+is called into being. Life would have, therefore, to be
+static when the actual state of society would be perfect.
+A question remained and indeed was of moment. Could
+life be static?</p>
+
+<p>The answer could not have waited long for so sharp an
+observer of life. Life is dialectic. The nature of life was
+manifest to him in the arts. De Sanctis had taught him
+to see that, whilst the very power of his own individuality
+was compelling him to realise that nothing is done but by
+single men acting, acting however as members of the
+various collectivities which determined their personalities.
+He could no longer think of choosing a religion and imposing
+it on his followers; they had one at hand which had
+been prepared for them by history. Little by little the
+truth came. Men did not act for mankind, they acted for
+their family, for their religion, for their country; they
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>acted to better their conditions or to prevent them from
+getting worse. To release Man from his traditions was
+equivalent to taking the roots of a tree from the ground,
+and condemning it to dry, moulder and rot.</p>
+
+<p>Was, then, Socialism a drug of such a kind that it could
+only do harm? Surely it had done wonders for the
+wretched lower classes of Italy! Then the outbreak of the
+European War spurred him to take the step which had
+become inevitable. His mind was ready; his genius had
+reached maturity; circumstances would do the rest.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It is necessary to realise the man and his Dantesque
+gift for looking at the idea and grasping facts all along, for
+discharging with personal passion a most impersonal task.
+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 action. 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
+whole, and to the actual situation of fact. Macchiavelli,
+it must be borne in mind, tried to do with his Tuscan
+militia what Mussolini has achieved, and he only succeeded
+in realising how out of keeping with the times his scheme
+had been. Sadly, this forerunner of Mussolini, not inferior
+to him in genius or reading, had to sit down and write what
+the regenerator of Italy would have to do, 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 pen. “Everyone knows,” says
+Benedetto Croce, who is by no means a Fascist, in the
+<i>Philosophy of the Practical</i>, printed for the first time in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span>1908, “that no <i>vultus instantis tyranni</i> can extinguish the
+freedom of the soul; no ruler, be he ever so strong and
+violent, can prevent a rebellion.” If people choose to use
+the word tyrant in the Greek sense of the word they may
+call Mussolini a tyrant, for he is and will be an unconstitutional
+ruler until the new institutions are so framed, that
+the new régime can function normally. But if it is implied
+by that, as the modern sense of the word allows, that he
+rules against the people’s will it is merely absurd, and one
+single fact could prove the contrary. When two years ago
+he asked that a certain sum should be subscribed in dollars
+towards the paying to the United States War Debt, the
+issue was many times what he had asked. It would not
+be true to facts to omit that although it was not compulsory,
+there was a good deal of moral pressure made to
+get the people to subscribe. But surely they did not need
+to cover it so many times and the excess was indeed most
+spontaneously subscribed.</p>
+
+<p>The people of Italy do grumble at many things which are
+done by the Fascists, and anybody would do so. It is
+mainly, however, individual actions which are the object
+of complaint and not laws or public services. 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
+power, and the country felt the need of being governed
+in one way or another.</p>
+
+<p>It has been shown in the first part of this book why Italy
+was not governed at all, why no public service could work
+effectively, why foreign policy had to be so inferior to the
+real position of the country, why the beautiful peninsula
+had fallen into a state bordering on anarchy. It is difficult
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>for an Englishman to realise how a country could fall
+into such conditions. England has five or six centuries
+of political experience, 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
+legislature. Everybody in England is familiar with the
+process through which political forms come into being.
+People struggle to reach a certain form of government and
+that moment of dialectic ends when the form is reached;
+they then apply it more and more fully and during its
+application discover its limitations; this second movement
+ends in criticism of the whole thing; finally, people
+set themselves to remedy its shortcomings. This last
+moment coincides in the people with the full consciousness
+of dissatisfaction, and in the leaders with a clear understanding
+of the new tendencies to be satisfied. Thus the
+people learn to use a new form whilst they are using, then
+discarding, the one that came before it. In Italy nothing
+of the sort happened. The political leaders would have
+been ashamed to be behindhand in what was considered
+“social progress.”</p>
+
+<p>The immediate aftermath of the war in Italy was as we
+have seen morally a tragedy. It seemed as if something
+had died, something spiritual. Everything seemed to be
+going to pieces. Nobody seemed to think, nobody seemed
+to realise that moral forces, a national consciousness had
+been produced by the general sacrifice. A few heroes were
+watching over the flame lit up in the young souls who
+had learned truth in the bitter experience of war. They
+were very few indeed, and they could only get a hearing
+through the actual violence with which they fell on the old
+political classes, who were intent on convincing the people
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span>that the war had to be forgotten as a nightmare, that man
+must forget it as soon as possible to throw himself again
+into his pursuit of material well-being.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the smallness of their number—when Mussolini
+founded the first <i>Fascio</i> in 1919 they were 150—they
+were enough to arouse a deep echo in the youth of Italy,
+which was beginning both for spiritual and practical
+reasons to conceive life as an energy, a force, a consciousness
+transcending the limits set by the interests of the
+individual, bound to upset violently the quiet and selfish
+life of the man intent on the satisfaction of his most
+empirical desires.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Mussolini’s belief was that you could make man realise
+that, if he is the centre of the universe, he is so through
+his relation to the universe, but that you could not do
+this by words. The only way to make men realise that
+selfishness, when it becomes absolute is bound to reduce
+society to atomistic irrelativeness and thereby to anarchy,
+was, according to him, <i>action</i>. If a body of men were ready
+to do, through coherent action and sacrifice of their
+individual wills, what the government ought to have done,
+then the people would know that they could cease from
+being bullied by the Bolshevist Socialists and followers of
+Don Sturzo, provided they were willing to sacrifice their
+individual wills, as the men of a team of football do when
+they want to win a match. 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 selves.
+There was, however, no time to organise a religious
+revival; and his knowledge of men provided him with the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>one intuition that could be acted upon at the time. He
+called on them to defend the value of their own sacrifice
+in the trenches and in the field. Now that was not cold
+and distant as the idea of the nation might have proved;
+it was quite real to them and moved them consequently as
+nothing else could. Through the action of a few hundreds
+several hundreds of thousands were induced to fight for the
+defence of what had been their former action. 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 broken; the breaking up of that tyranny made the
+people look upon the Black Shirts as their liberators.
+Peasant women and children were once more free to go
+to Church, officers and wounded men were once more
+free to go about in their uniforms without being attacked
+or insulted, workmen were once more free to attend their
+daily work and earn their money as they liked. The
+Fascists did not have to fight their way to power. They
+merely took it and were cheered on to taking it.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>As soon as Mussolini was in power he was asked by his
+ministers what his programme was. He curtly answered
+“that it was to realise the full value of Italy’s sacrifice
+in the war.” He had no political programme and was so
+indifferent to party distinctions that he took ministers
+from every party, choosing them only according to their
+qualification as experts. What he required from them was
+the maximum of efficiency, and the maximum also of
+personal responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>His first great move was the reform of education. For
+him the greatness of a country depended on the consciousness
+of its citizens. The work was naturally entrusted to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span>Giovanni Gentile, who was the greatest authority on
+pedagogy. 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 Rome. The main features of
+it are the re-introduction of religious and moral, æsthetic
+and practical education in the schools where rational
+instruction had been paramount for twenty years. This
+was in accord with modern philosophy, reinstating in their
+lawful places along with imagination and intuition, all the
+activities of Mind which had not been duly recognised
+nor sufficiently developed in the last generations.
+Religion is understood as the one thing capable of providing
+man with a reasonable outlook upon life as a whole,
+with a deep consciousness of his own importance as a
+factor in the world, and with an equally deep consciousness
+of his nonentity as soon as he ceases to be part of a
+whole, and considers himself apart from his relations to
+his family, to his church, to his school, to his country.
+Æsthetic education is meant to develop the faculty of
+realising with great definiteness. The child must not
+describe in his small essays of ten lines or less something
+that he cannot draw, and he must not draw something
+different from that which he describes. “Practical” is
+a very bad term for the development of judgment in
+children yet it is the latest word of philosophy which is
+introduced here.</p>
+
+<p>A good deal of the new education in Italy is done
+through the teaching of history. It may be pointed out,
+for instance, by the teachers, that Russia has had less
+importance in the development of civilisation than
+England or France, though they are so much smaller.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>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 inhabitants.
+Athens and Persia may be opposed in the same way. The
+child is thus gradually brought to realise the creative
+power of man’s will when it is the “good-will” of the
+Scriptures. Such will is presented to him as the individual
+will <i>with a plus</i>. That is to say that the man who realises
+his duty towards his family, his school, country and so
+on, creates something and thereby is really the collaborator
+of God.</p>
+
+<p>Another side of this education is the highly ideal notion
+of actual reality which is enforced. The child is taught
+that school is not a particular building, but any place
+where there is a master to teach and pupils to learn. The
+character of such a place is bound to the two acts of
+teaching and learning, therefore, their liberty is a sacred
+thing. He who prevents the master from being heard,
+the pupils from hearing him and learning what he says,
+destroys such liberty. Ceasing himself to listen and to
+learn, he loses his quality as a pupil, therefore, if his
+schoolfellows kick him out or the master, to protect their
+liberty and their right to learn, sends him away he has
+nothing to say, for he has forfeited his rights by ceasing
+to learn. He is a pupil in as far as he is learning. It is
+needless to point out that in consequence of this a workman
+is entitled to his rights as such, only so long as he is
+a contributor to the productivity of the enterprise in
+which he is working; that a landowner is the owner of his
+land as far as he discharges his duty as such, which is of
+making such land produce as much as possible for himself,
+for his tenants and for the country; that a man has the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>rights of a citizen as long as he is conscious of his being
+one and discharges all the duties correlative to his rights.
+The Gentilian reform with Mussolini’s authority has been
+able to infuse a new life into the teachers of the elementary
+schools. They have taken their work up as an apostolate.
+Boys and girls know now that manual work is as dignified
+as any, and that it has the merit of being always in demand
+and being more productive than shop and office
+work. They are taught that they must think, when they
+choose a calling, of their old people whom they may have
+to help and of the family which they are going to create.
+On this particular point the success is wonderful and the
+author has had several opportunities of realising it. In
+Rome she was met by the request of a widow, the mother
+of four children, to recommend her eldest son 15 years old,
+to a senator to see if he could not find him a job as callboy.
+Objection was made to the choice of the job, so
+badly paid and so tedious, good at most for a weak or less
+clever lad; the recommendation, however, was promised
+out of respect for the mother’s choice. But the morning
+after the boy appeared, rather shy, and full of apologies.
+He had understood that the choice of the job had not been
+approved. Might he say what he felt about it? Then he
+began to unburden himself. “You know, miss, I cannot
+stand the notion of opening doors, answering bells and
+carrying trays.... I want to have a real calling....
+If I am a trained workman I can go all over the world, or
+stay here and marry, helping my mother all along, because
+I can get 35 lire a day and even more. If I am a real
+workman ...” He made up his mind to be a printer
+and was introduced to a publisher.</p>
+
+<p>Religious and patriotic as it is, education in Italy is,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>moreover, grounded on a deep sense of what are the family
+duties of man, and on a few sound ideas of what is economic
+in every man’s life. Economy is by Mussolini transformed
+into a moral value. In this again we see his political
+genius going to meet Croce’s theories without knowing
+anything about them. For Croce, an action is economic
+when it is due to the will of a well-informed individual,
+it becomes moral when the individual’s act of will is
+consonant with the will of the whole. The most typical
+example is that known under the name of <i>Campagna del
+Grano</i>, which is meant to induce the landowner and his
+tenants to use the most scientific means of increasing the
+production of the soil, in order that the country should
+be either freed from the enormous expenditure of wheat
+importation or have it balanced by the silk, wine, fruit
+and oil which should be exported in greater quantities.
+Travelling teachers go from village to village and are met
+willingly by the peasants whom they address in the most
+homely way. First technical suggestions are made with
+statistics of results obtained in the nearest fields of
+experiment. Then they are discussed with the men.
+Finally, 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 increased, but that they must above
+all, remember that they will discharge the first of their
+civic duty; their productive activity is as constructive
+as that of the great scientist and as noble as their own
+life in the trenches during the war. You must no longer
+plough, sow, reap for your own self, that is to say exclusively
+for your material self, but for the state, which is that
+same empirical self <i>plus</i> its transcendental complement.
+Thereby ploughing, sowing and reaping are no longer the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>work of Man, slave of his material needs, but of Man
+transcending them, without disregarding them, however,
+and lifting his daily occupation to the dignity of a moral
+realisation of his own economic value. The state must,
+indeed, according to such ideas, be universally present as
+a moral factor in every branch of its citizen’s activity.
+It is, in fact, the all-pervading consciousness that man
+must have of his citizenship which expresses itself as
+government.</p>
+
+<p>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 it, and many acting upon it although they
+could not have explained it at all. This <i>moral</i> 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 Syndicates. This has nothing to do with the
+Fascist Syndicates which were until recently opposed to
+the Socialist trade unions as one political organisation to
+another. The new Syndicates are to be of no political colour
+at all; their action is to be purely economic and they are
+nearly compulsory.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_12_12" href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Every man must belong to one of
+them either as a labourer, a capitalist or an intellectual,
+the last category containing most professional men. 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 employed. Such delegates are mostly the
+secretaries of the Syndicates and must belong to the calling
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>of the men whose interests are entrusted to them; then
+they must have qualified and hold a diploma testifying
+to their technical and economic knowledge of the problems
+that they may have to treat. The fact that they
+must belong to the trade they exercise and actually
+exercise it, sweeps away all the professional secretaries
+of trade unions, who, living out of their leadership of the
+workmen, are ready to do anything to retain their posts.
+No less important is the necessity of their technical and
+economical qualification. Yet <i>as for the moment</i> 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 <i>they are appointed
+by the government. And this is one weak point of the organisation</i>,
+although it is obviously a temporary one.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest it is simply wonderful. The delegates of
+the two syndicates—employed and employers—meet,
+and they discuss the point at issue. Usually they come to
+an agreement because the greatest consideration is taken
+of the economic facts, local conditions of life, supply and
+demand of work and so on. Failing agreement, the syndicates
+themselves meet and discuss the matter. If the agreement
+is not possible the delegates meet again, but in the
+presence of a special magistrate, who studies the case and
+whose conclusions are enforced by law. No lock-out or
+strike is even contemplated; they have become an
+offence against the community, and as such liable to
+various penalties. Men are free to produce, but not to
+destroy.</p>
+
+<p>This brings our study to a conclusion, since to deal
+with any one point of those which have been merely
+sketched here would require a whole volume. The people’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>will is free so long as what they wish is for the common
+good and their own good, but it is not free to want anything
+that is either not for the common good or against it.
+Football is still the best example. The men of a team
+freely want to win the match and freely do what they are
+ordered to do by their captain, but they are not free to
+show off or to spoil the game, to spite the captain or any one
+of the men.</p>
+
+<p>Mussolini makes no mystery about it; his party has
+come into the world as the negation of the Rights of Man
+as they were formulated in the eighteenth century; as
+the negation of Liberty as it has been understood, that is
+to say abstracting it from its correlative term Law; as
+the negation of democracy as far as democracy is understood,
+through a wrong interpretation of its Greek root
+taking people as equivalent to lower class, is quantity
+opposed to quality—whereas it is equivalent to the nation
+as a whole; as the negation of the equality of 1789 which
+was materially and mechanically conceived.</p>
+
+<p>Yet such negations are the preliminary stage to affirmations—the
+affirmation of the rights of man <i>arising from
+his consciousness of duty</i>; of liberty as the positive term
+of Law, yet as inseparable from it as light from shadow;
+of democracy understood as the impossibility of any class
+willing to rule by force over other classes, be it by the force
+of wealth, arms, or numbers; finally, the equality of men,
+both moral and legal, according to which every man’s
+rights must be proportioned to what he does for the community.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>it. Whilst in the Anglo-Saxon and French views of
+political reality the State is a function of the citizen;
+whilst in the German view, whether in its Imperialistic or
+Communistic form, the citizen is a function of the state,
+for modern Italy the state is the consciousness of the
+citizen transcending itself and postulating itself in religious
+objectivity.</p>
+
+<p>No class differences, no financial differences may therefore
+be rendered permanent by the State. No care must
+be spared that may ensure their eternal mutability.
+Differences are necessary to permit moral, social, and
+economic progress; but their fertility lies in their
+elasticity. If “Avanti” was not the motto of Socialism
+the Fascists could make it theirs; as it is, reintroducing
+faith and belief at the basis of man’s life they seem to
+point to higher moral, political and economical conquests.
+The only motto that can befit the black shirts movement
+is therefore <i>Sursum corda</i>.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">
+    FOOTNOTES
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</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 Socialism.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> Just as the idea of family in any one individual makes him feel
+that the rest of the people are to him <i>not his family</i>, are to him objective
+reality, whilst his people are to him THE FAMILY, and part of his
+subjective reality.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3" class="label">[3]</a> The author has lived in Italy as a student since May, 1913, in
+constant contact with people of all classes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4" href="#FNanchor_4_4" class="label">[4]</a> To refer to one single district and to facts directly known by the
+author, it may be stated that in May, 1920, most of the province of
+Udine having been organised under Don Sturzo’s white banner, the
+peasants had their minds perverted by the very priests to whom they
+had looked hitherto for moral guidance, to the extent of starving their
+own cattle, of ceasing to milk their cows, leaving hundreds of beasts
+howling day and night for a week. (Some of the land-owners, above
+all those who were sportsmen, did their best, at the risk of their life,
+to relieve the poor animals, but could not manage to go round the
+stables every day.) The present writer is a Roman Catholic, a friend
+of peasants wherever she goes and an animal lover; 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-houses, making bullies of country folk she has
+known for thirteen years as excellent people, looking after their cattle
+with so much humanity that they never sit down to a meal before
+their beasts are fed. It is therefore better to state a few facts with
+names and dates. In May, 1920, in San Martino al Tagliamento,
+Count Francesco di Prampero was sequestered in his house with four
+men of the white legion mounting guard on his doors, to compel him
+to yield to the will of the priests and their followers. The same might
+be said of all the land-owners of the villages where Don Sturzism
+flourished. But Count Francesco di Prampero is selected here as
+being such a friend of peasants, that he never lived with his family,
+since he was in his teens preferring the company of his tenants,
+although he belongs to the most ancient aristocracy.</p>
+
+<p>In the same year groups of followers of Don Sturzo and some <i>Arditi
+Bianchi</i> went about with their white flag compelling people to kiss
+the hem of it and caning those who would not, the <i>Arditi Bianchi</i>,
+who were the armed legion of the party, being ready to shoot the
+obdurate men or women. As a matter of fact, the most terrible harm
+was that of the sacraments, in a province as religious as that of Udine,
+so that it is no wonder that Benedict XV, asked by the present writer
+if he could approve such things, was absolutely shocked and let her
+understand that since the war it was his greatest torment.</p>
+
+<p>Space compels to bring this note to a conclusion, and it may be
+said that one of the foremost lieutenants of Don Sturzo, in that Province,
+was Monsignor Gori, a canon of the cathedral of Udine, a man who
+rejoiced over the defeat of his country at Caporetto, befriended the
+invaders, and betrayed two women who had said to him that they
+were praying for the victory of the allies, so that on his denunciation
+they were condemned by the Austrians. This may give a fair idea of
+what was a party that took such a man not only in its ranks, but as a
+main agent, knowing him to be even then, before the advent of Fascism,
+in antagonism with his Archbishop, whose patriotism has since
+brought upon him the underhand persecution of the clergy that had
+been contaminated by Don Sturzism even in its ecclesiastical discipline.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5" class="label">[5]</a> See Francisco de Sancti’s <i>Storia della Letteratura Italiana</i>, Lateza,
+Bari, vol. ii, chap. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6" href="#FNanchor_6_6" class="label">[6]</a> <i>Philosophy of the Practical.</i> 1912. Macmillan, London.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7" href="#FNanchor_7_7" class="label">[7]</a> Quoted by Wildon Carr’s <i>The Philosophy of Mind</i> of Benedetto
+Croce.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8" href="#FNanchor_8_8" class="label">[8]</a> <i>Op. cit.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9_9" href="#FNanchor_9_9" class="label">[9]</a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, page 491.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10_10" href="#FNanchor_10_10" class="label">[10]</a> The same can be said of the Israelite community.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11_11" href="#FNanchor_11_11" class="label">[11]</a> Negativity does not imply unreality.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12_12" href="#FNanchor_12_12" class="label">[12]</a> The way in which they are compulsory is not quite simple; but
+the fact is that when the new institutions are framed men will perhaps
+get their political rights as members of the corporations.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">
+    INDEX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<ul class="index">
+  <li class="ifrst">Alberti, Leone Battista, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Alfieri, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ardigo, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Aretino, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ariosto, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Aristotle, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Bacon, Francis, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bacon, Roger, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bainville, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bayle, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Beltramelli, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Berkeley, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bodin, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Boccacio, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bassuet, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bismarck, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Cairoli, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Campanella, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Carducci, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Carlo, Alberto, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cavour, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cherbury, Herbert of, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Corneille, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cola di Rienzo, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Costa, Andria, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Carradini, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Crispi, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Croce, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170–188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cromwell, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cumberland, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cuoco, Vincenzo, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Dante, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">D’Annunzio, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">D’Azeglio Massimo, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Depretis, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">De Ruggiero, G., <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">De Sanctis, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Descartes, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114–124</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Ercole, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Federzoni, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ficino Marsilio, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fiorentino, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Frederick II, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fichte, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Garibaldi, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gentile, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188–210</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Gioberti, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ghibellines, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Giolitti, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Grotius, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Guarini, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Guicciardini, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Guelphs, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Hegel, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hobbes, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hume, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Johnson, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Kant, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Louis XIV, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Landino, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lévy Bruhl, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Leibniz, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Locke, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Machiavelli, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mâle, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mazzini, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Malespini, A., <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Maritain, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marx, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Monnier, Ph., <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Melzi, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>Mill, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Michelangelo, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Minghetti, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Montaigne, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Montesquieu, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mussolini, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Nitti, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Newton, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Orange, William, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Pascal, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pagano, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Plato, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Plutarch, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Poliziano, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Petrarch, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Piccolomini, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pisano Nicolo, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Rosmini, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Reggio, E., <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rousseau, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Salandra, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Saitta, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">San Giuliano, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sarfatti, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Savonarola, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Scholasticism, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Shaftesbury, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sonnino, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Solmi, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Spaventa, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Spinoza, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sturzo, and his party, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. Anselm, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. Augustin, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">St. Thomas, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Tasso, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Toland, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Tocco, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Vico, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124–136</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Villari, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vittorio, Emmanuele, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Wildon Carr, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY<br>
+THE GARDEN CITY PRESS LIMITED, LETCHWORTH, HERTS
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter transnote">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_notes" style="margin-top:0.5em">
+    Transcriber’s notes
+  </h2>
+<p>No attempt has been made to correct or normalize the spelling of proper
+names or non-English text. The index is in original order. Footnotes
+have been gathered at the end of the text, before the index. The included cover
+is a modified version of the book’s title page and is placed in the public domain.
+</p>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77090 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77090
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77090)