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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 K. 
 
 T — ir

 
 EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY 
 EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 MAZZINI'S ESSAYS 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 THOMAS JONES, M.A.
 
 THE PUBLISHERS OF 6F€1\l'-SlIz.^CSQS 
 LIB'l\v{\R^' WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND 
 FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST 
 OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED 
 VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER 
 THE FOLLOWING TWELVE HEADINGS: 
 
 TRAVEL ^ SCIENCE ^ FICTION 
 
 THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY 
 
 HISTORY ^ CLASSICAL 
 
 FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 ESSAYS ^ ORATORY 
 
 POETRY & DRAMA 
 
 BIOGRAPHY 
 
 ROMANCE 
 
 IN TWO STYLES OF BINDING, CLOTH, 
 FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP, AND 
 LEATHER, ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP 
 
 London : J. JvL DENT i CO. 
 New York : E. P. DUTTON & CO.
 
 THE DUTIES 
 OF MAN AND 
 OTHER ESSAYS iS 
 BY-JOSEPH 
 MAZZ1NI>(3 
 
 LONDONrPUBLISHEP 
 byj M DENT- ^ CO 
 
 AND IN NEW YORK 
 BY EPDUTTON ZfCO
 
 PRINTED BY HAZELL, WATSON AND 
 VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY
 
 (College 
 Library 
 
 M^se 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I 
 
 Joseph Mazzini died on March lo, 1872. Two days later 
 the Times recorded the event in these words : " We have 
 to announce to-day the death of a man who in his time has 
 played a most singular part upon the theatre of European 
 politics ; one whose name has for years been regarded as 
 a symbol of Revolution, or rather Republicanism ; one in 
 whose personal character there were many fine and noble 
 qualities ; but still a man who was feared even more widely 
 than he was loved, and one whose departure from the scene 
 of action, to say the least, will be no unwelcome news to 
 several crowned and discrowned members of the family of 
 European sovereigns. He was the man who ever ' troubled 
 Israel ' by his ceaseless efforts in the cause of Republicanism, 
 and now at length he is at rest. He died on Sunday at 
 Pisa." A selection from the writings of this terror of 
 principalities and powers is reprinted in this little book. 
 The most timid and law-abiding citizen need not fear to 
 turn over its pages. Two years ago the Italian people 
 celebrated the centenary of Mazzini's birth. The King and 
 his Ministers went in state to hear him eulogised ; com- 
 memorations were held in the government schools by order 
 of the Minister of Instruction ; and the flags of Italy and 
 England were wrapped around his monument. 
 
 Mazzini's name is not now as familiar to English ears 
 as it was in the mid-Victorian period. Other days, other 
 heroes. A Scottish university professor used sometimes to 
 take a census of the students who had read Sartor as a 
 rough test of Carlyle's place in the reading of young 
 
 vii 
 
 1 1 RR1 n\
 
 viii Introduction 
 
 Scotsmen. The results showed that Carlyle was following 
 the bag of meal and becoming a traditional diet. A teacher 
 who should number the students of our universities who had 
 read the Duties of Man would meet with a more intelligible 
 but not less complete ignorance of an inspiring book, and 
 with a knowledge of its author which never went beyond 
 coupling him with Garibaldi. Their fathers, who were boys 
 in the fifties and sixties, probably marched through the 
 village street shouting : 
 
 I wish I had a penny ! 
 
 What for? What for? 
 
 To buy a rope, to hang the Pope 
 
 Instead of Garibaldi. 
 
 Boys are readier to chant the exploits of a soldier in a red 
 shirt than the ideas of a prophet in a black coat, and the 
 people are mostly boys. But that Mazzini's name will live 
 on among those of Italy's greatest citizens and the world's 
 best men, seems now beyond dispute. He has never 
 enjoyed the ready applause accorded to the successful 
 soldier, nor the sometimes sinister fame achieved by the 
 successful statesman. Just as in the days of his flesh he 
 passed along the by-ways of Europe, an exile from every 
 land but our own, ever conspiring and ever eluding the 
 authorities, so his subsequent influence has been fugitive, 
 secret, noiseless, but none the less real, deep, persistent. 
 His best compositions have had little vogue, but they are 
 treasured by the musicians who know. Out of print, and 
 unguessed at by the multitude, their teaching has inspired 
 some of the most unselfish activities of our time, — the 
 devotion of some settlement worker or East-End doctor, of 
 some incorruptible councillor or ardent co-operator, of some 
 labour leader or nationalist. But Mazzini's most precious 
 bequest to the world was not a bundle of essays, but a noble 
 life. Like Socrates he lived his philosophy, but in circum- 
 stances much more intricate and baftling than those which 
 beset the Athenian. The story of those circumstances is 
 part of the general history of Europe in the nineteenth
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 century. In so far as Mazzini shared in them they have 
 been narrated for English readers most fully and judicially 
 by Mr. Bolton King. A sympathetic memoir was written 
 by Madame Venturi, and there are the admirable Essays of 
 F. W. H. Myers and William Clarke. The story of the 
 Roman Republic has been well told by Mr. R. M. Johnston.' 
 Mazzini's own autobiographical notes are included in the 
 collected edition of his writings.^ These sources, and 
 Mazzini's own words wherever possible, have been freely 
 used in the short sketch which follows. 
 
 II 
 
 In the eighteenth century princes ruled over tracts of 
 land rather than nations. The distinction was clearly seen 
 when the French Revolution threw the people to one side 
 and the government to the other. It is a commonplace 
 to say that Napoleon builded better than he knew, and 
 that instead of making France supreme in Europe he 
 roused the slumbering spirit of nationality everywhere. 
 Himself an Italian, pride of race united with the desire 
 to overthrow the Austrian dominion in Italy, and led him 
 deliberately to encourage national aspirations there. In 
 1800 he defeated the Austrians at Marengo, and proceeded 
 to divide the Italian spoils among his relatives and generals. 
 Their rule had all the unlovely features of the time — secret 
 police, press censorship, nepotism, intrigue, plunder. Local 
 prejudices were outraged ; tens of thousands of Italians 
 fell fighting in Spain and Russia under a foreign flag. 
 On the other hand, the Napoleonic regime crippled 
 feudalism, strengthened the central authority, established 
 schools, braced the soldiery, and generally quickened the 
 energies of the people. Napoleon fell. Scheming diplo- 
 mats at Vienna parcelled out the Italian peninsula afresh 
 between scheming kings and clerics. Austria and Piedmont 
 became the predominant partners. The republics of 
 
 ' To this list must now be added the important work of Mr. G. M. 
 Trevelyan : Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Republic. 
 " London : Smith, Elder.
 
 X Introduction 
 
 Venice and Genoa were doomed. The people, always 
 dreading absorption by France, welcomed back the old 
 rulers, good and bad alike. With them came the ana- 
 chronisms of the old order, " the legal abuses, the feudal 
 privileges, monasteries, ecclesiastical courts, the disabilities 
 of Jews and Protestants." Reaction against the disturbing 
 ideas of the Revolution led to distrust of education and 
 the suppression of opinion. An epidemic of criticism was 
 endangering eternal salvation. " The Liberals are sinners," 
 declared the Duke of Modena : " pray for their repentance, 
 but punish the unrepentant." 
 
 Meanwhile a young Genoese was pondering over for- 
 bidden French newspapers which his father kept hidden 
 behind his innocent medical books. This inquisitive youth 
 was Joseph Mazzini, born on June 22, 1805. Visitors to 
 the City of Palaces will recall the house in the Via 
 Lomellini ; the Greek and Italian legends ; the faded 
 wreaths from some loyal republican club ; the soiled and 
 shabby copies of Guicciardini's History, Robertson's 
 Charles V., Emerson's E7igHsh Traits ; the courteous 
 attendant who presents the stranger with a copy of the 
 Duties of Man. The father was a professor of anatomy 
 at the university, the mother a woman of strong intellect 
 and deep affection. Both were alive to the mighty move- 
 ments going on around them, and their son heard daily 
 the republican talk of parents "whose bearing towards 
 high or low was ever the same." He was a delicate child, 
 and apparently never went to school. While a worthy old 
 priest taught him the Latin declensions, the pupil was 
 learning to revere the republics of Greece and Rome. 
 At fourteen he matriculated at the University. He chafed 
 at " chapels " and the innumerable formalities expected 
 from the students. His gentle nature and acute mind won 
 him an easy ascendency over his companions. " Simple 
 and economical in his own habits," wrote one of them, 
 "he always found means generously to assist the wants 
 of those around him ; indeed he carried tliis disposition 
 to excess ; for, not content with giving away his books
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 and money, he constantly bestowed even his clothes upon 
 the needy among his fellow-students." It was intended 
 that he should follow his father's profession, but he sickened 
 at the dissecting-room and turned to law. His real 
 mistress, however, was literature— "a thousand visions of 
 historical dramas and romances floated before my mental 
 eye"— and he would have served her with fine devotion 
 had not a more imperious rival claimed his loyalty. 
 
 The wind bloweth where it listeth. The call to Mazzini 
 came on a Sunday in April 1821, when he and his mother 
 and a friend of the family were walking in the streets of 
 Genoa. They were suddenly accosted by " a tall, black- 
 bearded man, with a severe and energetic countenance, 
 and a fiery glance that I have never since forgotten. He 
 held out a white handkerchief toward us, merely saying, 
 ' For the refugees of Italy.' My mother and friend dropped 
 some money into the handkerchief, and he turned from us 
 to put the same request to others." The man was one 
 of a crowd of revolutionists who had flocked to Genoa after 
 a fruitless insurrection against Austria. The incident made 
 a deep impression on the boy of sixteen. His spirit was 
 crushed by the impossibility he felt of ever conceiving by 
 what means to free his country from the foreign yoke. 
 " In the midst of the noisy, tumultuous life of the scholars 
 around me, I was sombre and absorbed, and appeared like 
 one suddenly grown old. I childishly determined to dress 
 always in black, fancying myself in mourning for my country." 
 It was not easy to give up literature for politics. He read 
 what books in Italian, French, and English he could lay 
 hands on at a time when "half the masterpieces of 
 contemporary European literature came under the censor's 
 ban." He steeped his mind in the Bible and Dante, Shake- 
 speare and Byron, Goethe and Schiller. Byron's passion 
 for history, his hatred of the doctrines of the Holy Alliance, 
 his sympathy with heroic endeavour, his exposure of the 
 sterility of egoism, explain the high place which Mazzini 
 always gave him among the world's poets. But it was 
 from the pages of Dante that he drew the richest nourish-
 
 xii Introduction 
 
 nient. Across five centuries of glory and shame, liberty 
 and servitude, deep called unto deep in the spirits of the 
 two men. The thought that seethed within the soul of 
 the great Florentine was now stirring afresh in the bosom 
 of the young Genoese — the yearning for unity, moral and 
 political, founded upon some great organic authoritative 
 idea, the love of country, the worship of Rome, the sublime 
 vision of the destiny in store for her, leading the human 
 race in holiness and truth. The pedantic critics and 
 syllable-splitters were all astray. One had made Dante 
 Guelph ; another Ghibelline ; nearly all proved him an 
 orthodox Catholic. He was none of these, cried Mazzini ; 
 he was a Christian and an Italian. 
 
 But it was no time for variant readings. The critic must 
 give way to the apostle. He found a pulpit in a commercial 
 paper published at Genoa, then in another at Leghorn. 
 Both were suppressed. Three articles were written for the 
 chief Italian review, the Aiitologia. But this was not enough 
 for his ardent spirit. He joined the secret society of the 
 Carbonari. It had once been the rallying-ground of enthusi- 
 astic Liberals who aimed in a vague way at independence, 
 but it was now a declining force, and a number of unsuccess- 
 ful risings had brought discredit upon it. It offered a way 
 of usefulness, however ; but Mazzini chafed under its fantastic 
 ritual, its negative programme, its patriotism that looked to 
 France for deliverance. He was already dreaming of a 
 very difterent society. But despotic governments dislike 
 dreamers. Mazzini was arrested, ostensibly on the charge 
 of introducing a recruit into the ranks of the Carbonari, 
 really, as the Governor of Genoa told his father, because he 
 was a thoughtful young man of talent, fond of solitary walks 
 by night. " We don't like young people thinking without 
 our knowing the subject of their thoughts." From his cell 
 in the fortress of Savona he looked out upon " the sea and 
 sky — two symbols of the infinite and, except the Alps, the 
 sublimest things in nature." Here, with a Bible, a Tacitus, 
 a Byron, and a friendly greenfinch for companions, he had 
 leisure to elaborate the plan of " Young Italy."
 
 Introduction xiii 
 
 III 
 
 The ideas of Italian unity and independence were not 
 born with Mazzini. In the distant past there had been 
 Dante and Rienzi. In the immediate past there had been the 
 French Revolution, Napoleon, Romanticism — all active in 
 the years surrounding Mazzini's birth. Romanticism has 
 been called the starting-point of the modern political schools 
 in Italy, the precursor alike of Young Italy and the Moderates. 
 It was more than a mere literary revolt ; it was a propaganda 
 of political ideas for which some of its apostles suffered the 
 horrors of the Spielberg. Songs, plays, pamphlets, novels, 
 were the vehicles of the new movement. Editions of Dante 
 appeared literally by the dozen. In 1820 the Antologia was 
 founded in order " to make Italy know itself." Seven years 
 later Manzoni published his famous novel, in which the 
 discerning could read the meaning as clearly as we now 
 read it in Kathleen ni Houlihan. Wherein did Mazzini 
 differ from these distinguished predecessors and contem- 
 poraries ? He set their ideas on fire. Where they were 
 literary he was political ; where they were critical he was 
 constructive ; where they were merely moral he was passion- 
 ately religious. 
 
 He came out of prison with a programme, the magnificent 
 daring of which can only be realised by those who know the 
 Italy of the time — morselled out into a mosaic of states, 
 divided by differences of speech and temper, honeycombed 
 with secret associations and spies ; an aristocracy fawning 
 on the foreign conqueror ; a common people " eating 
 Austria with their bread," and drugged by opera, carnival, 
 and charity ; a Church respected in proportion as one 
 travelled away from the centre of her influence to the 
 circumference. Out of the midst of this degradation, in it 
 but not of it, Mazzini, young and poor, lifted up his voice : 
 " I see the people pass before my eyes in the livery of 
 wretchedness and political subjection, ragged and hungry, 
 painfully gathering the crumbs that wealth tosses insultingly 
 to it, or lost and wandering in riot and the intoxication ot
 
 / 
 
 xiv Introduction 
 
 a brutish, angry, savage joy ; and I remember that those 
 brutalised faces bear the finger-print of God, the mark ot 
 the same mission as our own. I hft myself to the vision 
 of the future, and behold the people rising lin its majesty, 
 brothers in one faith, one bond of equality and love, one 
 ideal of citizen virtue that ever grows in beauty and might ; 
 the people of the future, unspoilt by luxury, ungoaded by 
 wretchedness, awed by the consciousness of its rights and 
 duties." He bade his countrymen unite and drive the 
 Austrian out, heedless of help from France. " No nation 
 deserves freedom or can long retain it which does not win 
 it for itself. Revolutions must be made by the people and 
 for the people." It was useless waiting for opportunities — 
 they must be made. But it was to be war, not only on the 
 Austrian, but on Italian ignorance, dissension, and vice — 
 the wretched brood of oppression. Servile habits and 
 unworthy aftections must go. The nation must purify 
 herself in order to fulfil her mission. The sole path to 
 victory was through sacrifice — constancy in sacrifice. In 
 the name of God and the people, he invited Italians to 
 march through poverty, exile, and death to a free country. 
 The second of these alternatives was to fall to his lot 
 immediately. Released from Savona, he was offered " in- 
 ternment in a small town, or exile," He chose the latter, 
 and in February 183 1 said his good-byes to his family, 
 crossed the Alps to Geneva, went thence to Lyons and 
 Marseilles. Here, in a small room, with a handful of 
 patriots recruited from the refugees in the town, he unfolded 
 his plans for transforming Italy into a free, independent, 
 republican nation. Unity was to be sought for by armed 
 , insurrection ; social reform by political action and education. 
 The aims of Young Italy were to be public ; its methods, 
 perforce, secret. To work in the open would be to march 
 straight to the Spielberg or the scaffold. " I never saw," 
 wrote Mazzini in after years, "any nucleus of young men 
 so devoted, capable of such strong mutual affection, such 
 pure enthusiasm, and such readiness in daily, hourly toil, as 
 were those who then laboured with me. We had no office,
 
 Introduction xv 
 
 no helpers. All day, and a great part of the night, we were 
 buried in our work, writing articles and letters, getting 
 information from travellers, enlisting seamen, folding papers, 
 fastening envelopes, dividing our time between literary and 
 manual work. . . . We lived as equals and brothers ; we 
 had but one thought, one hope, one ideal to reverence. The 
 foreign republicans loved and admired us for our tenacity 
 and unflagging industry ; we were often in real want, but 
 we were light-hearted in a way, and smiling because we 
 believed in the future." The young leader united to an 
 indomitable spirit a striking presence. His English bio- 
 grapher quotes a description of him as he appeared at this 
 time : " His long, curling black hair, which fell upon his 
 shoulders, the extreme freshness of his clear olive com- 
 plexion, the chiselled delicacy of his regular and beautiful 
 features, aided by his very youthful look and sweetness and 
 openness of expression, would have made his appearance 
 almost too feminine, if it had not been for his noble forehead, 
 the power of firmness and decision that was mingled with 
 their gaiety and sweetness in the bright flashes of his dark 
 eyes and in the varying expression of his mouth, together 
 with his small and beautiful moustachios and beard. 
 Altogether he was at that time the most beautiful being, 
 male or female, that I had ever seen, and I have not since 
 seen his equal." Thirty years later Jowett told a corre- 
 spondent, " Some friends of mine, who know him (Mazzini), 
 assure me that he has the greatest fascination of manner 
 they have ever met with." 
 
 The young band worked with an enthusiasm which stirred 
 a quick response at home. Articles, manifestoes, pamphlets 
 poured from their leader's fervid pen, were printed and 
 smuggled into Italy in barrels of pitch and bales of drapery, 
 and thrilled their readers with their elevated thought and 
 glowing prose. " Climb the hills," he bade them, " sit at the 
 farmer's table, visit the workshops and the artisans, whom 
 you now neglect. Tell them of their rightful liberties, their 
 ancient traditions and glories, the old commercial greatness 
 which has gone ; talk to them of the thousand forms of
 
 xvi Introduction 
 
 oppression, which they are ignorant of, because no one points 
 them out." Lodges sprang up in the chief towns of the 
 north and centre, thousands of recruits were enrolled, 
 and by 1833 the Austrian Government considered "Young 
 Italy" sutificiently dangerous to declare membership thereof 
 high treason punishable by death. 
 
 IV 
 
 For centuries Piedmont had been a buffer state, struck now 
 by France, now by Austria. In such a position it was 
 natural that the arts of diplomacy and war should absorb the 
 main energies of the little kingdom. It was natural, too, 
 that patriots of all parties should look to Piedmont to lead 
 in the struggle against Austria. Mazzini now appealed to 
 its king to head the national movement. The character of 
 Charles Albert offers interesting parallels to that of another 
 potentate who in our own day has had to confront revolution. 
 He was pathetically regarded as the leader of causes he 
 dreaded. "Everybody," it was said, "expects a constitu- 
 tion from Charles Albert." In his youth he had dallied with 
 the Carbonari, but his Liberalism was a spent sympathy. 
 " The religious mood grew upon him ; he became a devotee, 
 easily played on by confessor and Jesuit, timidly scrupulous 
 to prove himself a good son of the Church and gain Papal 
 sanction for his acts." " He stood 'between the dagger of 
 the Carbonari and the poisoned chocolate of the Jesuits'. . . 
 ' a strange compound of the worldly and the martyr spirit, 
 no hero, but a perplexed, scruple-harassed man, the victim 
 of a fatal indecision between the authority of convention 
 and the noble promptings of his heart.'" His reply to 
 Mazzini's appeal was to order him to be seized should he 
 cross the frontier. The exiles then planned a rising with 
 Genoa and Alessandria as centres, hoping to force the King 
 to lead or abdicate, but an accident revealed the plot and 
 a savage persecution crushed the conspiracy. There are 
 senses in which history repeats itself with very httle difference.
 
 Introduction xvii 
 
 Forged signatures, enervating drugs, physical torture were 
 used to force the prisoners to betray their comrades. 
 Dreading he might succumb, Jacopo Ruffini, Mazzini's 
 dearest friend, committed suicide in his cell. Mazzini him- 
 self was condemned to death, and the French Government 
 decreed his banishment ; but he remained hidden in Mar- 
 seilles for a year, pushing on the crusade. In the middle 
 of July 1833 he went to Geneva to organise another in- 
 surrection, the leadership of which, contrary to his advice, 
 was vested in an adventurer who exhausted the funds and 
 delayed action until all chance of success was gone. The 
 failure of the two expeditions and the strain of work, anxiety 
 and secrecy which they involved, preyed on Mazzini's health 
 and plunged him for a time into a black despair. The 
 forms of his dead comrades rose up before him " like the 
 phantoms of a crime and its unavailing remorse. I could 
 not recall them to life. How many mothers I had caused to 
 weep ' How many more must learn to weep, should I 
 persist in the attempt to arouse the youth of Italy to noble 
 action, to awaken in them the yearning for a common 
 country ! And if that country were indeed an illusion ! " 
 Diplomatic notes poured down upon Switzerland, and 
 Mazzini was banished from the Republic. Again he 
 managed to elude the police, leading a hunted life, nov/ 
 sheltered by some Protestant pastor, now spending months 
 in untenanted houses where in the moaning of the wind he 
 heard Rufifini's voice calling to him. Gradually the tempest 
 of doubt subsided. " One morning I awoke to find my mind 
 tranquil and my spirit calmed, as one who had passed 
 through a great danger. . . . The first thought that passed 
 across my spirit was, ' Your sufferings are the temptations of 
 egoism, and arise from a misconception of life.' " He 
 searched his heart to see if it had any wicked way in it. 
 Was there any lurking selfishness ? Material desires he 
 had surrendered long ago, but he had clung to the affections. 
 " I should have thought of them, as of a blessing from God, 
 to be accepted with thankfulness, not as of something to be 
 expected and exacted as a right and a reward. Instead of
 
 xviii Introduction 
 
 this, I had made them a condition of fulfilling my duties. 
 I had not reached the ideal of love, love that has no hope in 
 this life. I had worshipped not love but the joys of love." 
 He bade a long farewell to individual hopes, dug the grave, 
 not of his affections, but of all the desires and ineffable 
 comforts of affection, so that none might ever know the Ego 
 buried beneath. In like manner he traced to egotism the 
 failure of the French Revolution and the various unsuccess- 
 ful risings in Italy. Men had sought after happiness, 
 _^clamoured for their rights. A higher note must be struck. 
 "We fell as a political party, we must rise as a religious 
 party." " Life is a mission ; duty, therefore, its highest law. 
 . . . Each of us is bound to purify his own soul as a temple ; 
 to free it from egotism ; to set before himself, with a 
 religious sense of the importance of the study, the problem 
 of his own life ; to search out what is the most striking, the 
 most urgent need of the men by whom he is surrounded, 
 then to interrogate his own faculties and capacity, and 
 resolutely apply them to the satisfaction of that need. . . . 
 Young brothers, when once you have conceived and 
 determined your mission within your soul, let nought arrest 
 your steps. Fulfil it with all your strength ; fulfil it, whether 
 blessed by love or visited by hate ; whether strengthened by 
 association with others, or in the sad solitude that almost 
 always surrounds the martyrs of thought. The path is 
 clear before you ; you are cowards, unfaithful to your own 
 future, if, in spite of sorrows and delusions, you do not 
 pursue it to the end." 
 
 V 
 
 With Mazzini in Switzerland were Agostino and Giovanni 
 Ruffini. They lacked the heroic quality of their dead 
 brother, and felt acutely the strain of a conspirator's life. 
 For their sakes, chiefly, Mazzini decided to come to London,, 
 and they arrived here in January 1837. Mazzini grew to 
 love this " sunless and musicless island," but his first 
 experience of a dingy lodging in a back street filled him
 
 Introduction xix 
 
 with longing for the Alps which he had loved " almost as 
 a mother." More trying still was the impatience of his 
 comrades, who could not soar to Mazzini's transcendental 
 heights. Where all are geniuses life may be tolerable for 
 all, but the odds are against the happiness of the family in 
 which the genius is set solitary. Nor did a diet of potatoes 
 and rice, with their undoubted vegetarian virtues, conduce 
 to the harmony of the household near the Euston Road. 
 And the maid-of-all-work had never heard of the Gospel of 
 Duty ! Much may be endured where there is money to 
 procure better, but the exiles were in the direst poverty. 
 Mazzini was not the man to resist the importunities of his 
 countrymen while he had a penny left, and some of them 
 thought that " in the name of this chimera of human 
 brotherhood " they had a right to make themselves at home 
 in his house. Precious souvenii-s, books, clothes, began to 
 find their way to the pawnshops, and he dragged himself 
 from one moneylender to another, paying a ruinous rate 
 of interest. In the daytime he found his way into " the 
 valley of the shadow of books" — the international workshop 
 in Bloomsbury, and under its sheltering dome began to 
 turn out an article or two. He got to know some English 
 families, the Carlyles among the first. In 1840 he moved 
 to Chelsea — then a suburb of hayfields and market gardens 
 — to be near them, and they were very kind and helpful. 
 Mrs. Carlyle had a deep affection for him, and took him 
 into her confidence in her domestic troubles. He repaid 
 her with a couple of letters which are surely the noblest 
 ever penned in such a situation. 
 
 I 
 
 London, July 1S46. 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 I was yesterday almost the whole day out, and did not 
 receive your notes, except in the evening, when it was too late to 
 answer them. Your few words sound sad, deeply, I will not say
 
 XX Introduction 
 
 irreparably sad ; and the worst of it is that none can help you but 
 yourself. It is only you who can, by a calm, dispassionate, fair 
 re-examination of the past, send back to nothingness the ghosts and 
 phantoms that you have been conjuring up. It is only you who can 
 teach yourself that, whatever the present may be, you must front it 
 with dignity, with a clear perception of all your duties, with a due 
 reverence to your immortal soul, with a religious faith in times yet to 
 come, that are to dawn under the approach of other cloudless suns. 
 I could only point out to you the fulfilment of duties which can 
 make life— not happy— what can ? but earnest, sacred and resignated ; 
 but I would make you frown or scorn. We have a different con- 
 ception of life, and are condemned here down to walk on two 
 parallels. Still it is the feeling of those duties that saves me from 
 the atheism of despair, and leads me through a life every day more 
 barren and burdensome, in a sort of calm, composed manner — such, 
 I repeat, as the consciousness of something everlasting within us 
 claims from every living mortal. For I now most coolly and 
 deliberately do declare to you, that partly through what is known to 
 you, partly through things that will never be known, I am carr>'ing 
 a burden even heavier than you, and have undergone even bitterer 
 deceptions than you have. But by dint of repeating to myself that 
 there is no happiness under the moon, that life is a self-sacrifice 
 meant for some higher and happier thing ; that to have a few 
 loving beings, or, if none, to have a mother watching you from 
 Italy or from Heaven, it is all the same, ought to be quite enough 
 to preserve us from falling, and by falling, parting, I have mustered 
 up strength to go on, to work at my task as far as I have been able 
 to make it out, till I reach the grave : the grave for which the 
 hour will come, and is fast approaching without my loudly calling 
 
 for it. 
 
 Awake, arise, dear friend ! Beset by pain or not, we must go 
 on with a sad smile and a practical encouragement from one another. 
 We have something of our own to care about, something godlike 
 that we must not yield to any living creature, whoever it be. Your 
 life proves an empty thing, you say. Empty 1 Do not blaspheme. 
 Have you never done good ? Have you never loved ? Think of 
 your mother and do good — set the eye to Providence. It is not as 
 a mere piece of irony that God has placed you here : not as a mere 
 piece of irony that He has given us those aspirations, those yearnings 
 after happiness that are now making us both unhappy. Can't you 
 trust Him a little longer ? . . . How long will you remain at Seaforth ?
 
 Introduction xxi 
 
 Does he himself propose to go anywhere? 1 was coming to see you 
 on Saturday. Write if and when it does good even homceopathi- 
 cally to you, and be assured that to me it will always do. 
 
 . Ever yours, — 
 
 Joseph Mazzini. 
 
 II 
 
 July 15/A, 1846. 
 
 To Jane Welsh Carlyle, Seaforth. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 I could not write yesterday, as I intended, on account of the 
 death of Scipioni Petrucci's wife. . . . Yes ; " sad at death, but not 
 basely sad." That is what you must be, what I want you to be, 
 and what a single moment of truly earnest thought and faith will 
 cause you to be. Pain and joy, deception and fulfilled hopes are 
 just, as I often said, the rain and the sunshine that must meet the 
 traveller on his way. Bless the Almighty if He has thought proper 
 to send the latter to you. Button or wrap your cloak around you 
 against the first, but do not think a single moment that the one or 
 the other have anything to do with the end of your journey. You 
 know that ; but you want the faith that would give you strength 
 to fulfil the task shown by the intellect. These powers will give 
 you that too, if you properly apply to them — affection, a religious 
 belief, and the dead. You have affection for me, as I have for you : 
 you would not shake mine ? You would not add yourself to the 
 temptations haunting me to wreck and despair ? You would not 
 make me worse than I am by your example, by your showing your- 
 self selfish and materialist ? You believe in God ; don't you think, 
 after all, that this is nothing but an ephemeral trial, and that He 
 will shelter you at the journey's end under the wide wing of His 
 paternal love ? You had, have, though invisible to the eyes of 
 the body, your mother, your father, too. Can't you commune 
 with them ? I know that a single moment of true fervent love 
 for them will do more for you than all my talking ! Were they 
 now what you call living, would you not fly to them, hide your 
 head in their bosom and be comforted, and feel that you owe to 
 them to be strong — that they may never feel ashamed of their own 
 Jane ? Why can you think them to be dead, gone for ever, their 
 loving immortal soul annihilated ? Can you think that this vanish- 
 ing for a time has made you less responsible to them ? Can you, in 
 a word, love them less because they are far f>'om sight ? I have often
 
 xxii Introduction 
 
 thought that the arrangement by which loved and loving beings are 
 to pass through death is nothing but the last experiment appointed 
 by God to human love ; and often, as yoa know from me, I have 
 felt that a moment of true soul-communing with my dead friend 
 was opening a source of strength for me unhoped for, down here. 
 Did we not often agree about these glimpses of the link between 
 ours and the superior life? Shall we now begin to disagree? Be 
 strong, then, and true to those you loved, and proud, nobly proud 
 in the eyes of those you love or esteem. Some of them are deeply, 
 silently suffering, but needing strength too, needing it perhaps from 
 you. Get up and work ; do not set yourself apart from us. When 
 the Evil One wanted to tempt Jesus, he led Him into a solitude. 
 Believe me, my dear friend, ever yours, 
 
 Joseph Mazzini. 
 
 It was in these years of forced peace that Mazzini wrote 
 some of his most important essays on Byron and Goethe ; 
 on the minor works of Dante ; on Lamennais, whose 
 Words of a Believer, condemned in the Pope's Encyclical 
 as " small in size but of huge depravity," may have in- 
 fluenced Mazzini in writing the Duties of Maji. In 1843 
 he had subjected the teaching of Carlyle to a profound 
 criticism which is still far from commonplace, and which was 
 highly original then. In the following year Carlyle stood 
 staunchly by his critic in the episode of the mutilated 
 correspondence. Mazzini discovered that his letters v/ere 
 being tampered with, and that English officials in high 
 places were playing the spy for the Austrian Government. 
 The case came up in the House of Commons, and roused 
 general indignation. Sir James Graham made a lame de- 
 fence, and charged Mazzini with promoting assassination— a 
 charge afterwards honourably withdrawn. Carlyle pre- 
 tended he knew nothing and desired to know nothing of 
 Italian democracies and Young Italy's sorrows, of extraneous 
 Austrian Emperors in Milan, or poor old chimerical Popes 
 in Bologna ; but there was something else he did know, as 
 he testified in the Tiines. " I have had the honour to know 
 M. Mazzini for a series of years, and, whatever I may think 
 of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can
 
 Introduction xxiii 
 
 with great freedom testify to all men that he, if ever I have 
 seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, a man of 
 sterling veracity, humanity, and nobleness of mind, one of 
 those rare men, numerable, unfortunately, but as units in 
 this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls, who, 
 in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and practise 
 what is meant by that." The incident turned out a blessing 
 in disguise. It lifted Mazzini into English public life, and 
 brought to him and to the Italian cause a number of loyal 
 helpers, particularly the Ashursts, of whose daughters one 
 married James Stansfeld and another became Madame 
 Venturi, Mazzini's biographer. Among other friends were 
 William Shaen ; Peter Taylor, Member for Leicester, the 
 friend of Mill and " redresser-general of unheeded wrongs " ; 
 the Chartists, Thomas Cooper and Henry Vincent ; Joseph 
 Toynbee, the father of Arnold Toynbee ; W. J. Fox, the 
 Unitarian orator ; Joseph Cowen of Newcastle ; W. J. 
 Linton, the engraver ; and George Jacob Holyoake, the 
 veteran co-operator, who died but the other day. These 
 names recall the social wrongs and remedies of the forties : on 
 the one hand, bad harvests, famine, commercial crises, strikes, 
 unemployment ; on the other, the agitations for free trade, 
 a free press, and the six points of the Charter. Dr. Holland 
 Rose has pointed out ' that there was much in common 
 between the moral-force Chartists and the Italian democrat, 
 though the latter was at first inclined to band all English- 
 men as "materialist and sectarian." Residence in a country 
 where the industrial struggle was more fierce, more squalid, 
 than in his own sunnier, lazier land, deepened his sense or 
 the urgency of social reform. London, too, gave him the 
 opportunity of knowing some Italian workmen at close 
 quarters. He founded a political association among them, 
 and began the publication of a journal in which a portion 
 of the Duties of Man appeared. He befriended an un- 
 fortunate woman, and for years devoted a large share of his 
 scanty income to the education of her children. The organ- 
 boys attracted his notice. He was amazed to find that five 
 
 ' Rise of Demociacy, p. Sg.
 
 xxiv Introduction 
 
 or six Italians made a practice of inducing them to leave 
 their rural homes in Parma and Liguria under fair promises 
 of food and lodging and pay. Once here they were drilled 
 in all sorts of beggary and deceit, and were cruelly treated. 
 He was able to bring some of the slave-dealers to justice- in 
 the English courts and thereby terrify the rest. Better still, 
 in 1 84 1 he opened an evening school for the boys in Hatton 
 Garden, and continued it for seven years — till his return to 
 Italy — " a holy work, holily fulfilled." "They used to come 
 between nine and ten o'clock at night, bringing their organs 
 with them. We taught them reading, writing, arithmetic, 
 simple geography, and the elements of drawing. On the 
 Sunday evenings we gathered all our scholars together to 
 listen to an hour's lecture upon Italian history, the lives of 
 our great men, the outlines of natural philosophy — any sub- 
 ject in short that appeared to us calculated to elevate those 
 unformed minds, darkened by poverty and their state of 
 abject subjection to the will of others. Nearly every Sunday 
 evening for two years, I lectured to them upon Italian history 
 or elementary astronomy ; a subject eminently religious, and 
 calculated to purify the mind, which — reduced to popular 
 phraseology and form — should be among the first subjects 
 chosen for the education of the young." 
 
 vr 
 
 The failure of the expeditions organised by " Young 
 Italy" and the protracted exile of its chief had dissipated 
 the society which had set out with such radiant morning 
 hopes. Mazzini himself had his hours of disillusionment, 
 which come to every high priest of the ideal, and which 
 lower the level of life. He had failed to gauge the inertia 
 of his countrymen. He read his own shining faith into 
 them, and had fondly imagined that twenty millions from 
 the Alps to Etna were ready to strike for freedom when the 
 bugle called. He was impatient of men who temporised ; 
 he detested diplomacy, and thought the straight line was 
 the shortest between two given points. The Right had 
 
 ' Cf. The Roman Theocracy and the Republic, 1846-49- By R. M. John- 
 ston.
 
 Introduction xxv 
 
 such compelling power over his own pure soul that he 
 could not understand men who shrank from plain duties. 
 Their slackness made him blush — "as if I were lying." 
 These were poor qualities for a conspirator, and Mazzini was 
 a failure in that role. He was too dogmatic in utterance, 
 too precipitate in action, and he invariably exaggerated the 
 strength of his own side and underrated that of the enemy. 
 
 Meanwhile a party was growing up who had imbibed 
 much of Mazzini's teaching, but who from all the reasons 
 which hover between prudence and cowardice was inclined 
 to slower and less direct methods than his uncompromising 
 democratic nature would permit. This was the party of 
 the Moderates, led by a group of able patriotic writers 
 of varying views. Some counselled the postponement of 
 political insurrection and urged the establishment of schools, 
 savings-banks, model farms and railways. Others, de- 
 spairing of Unity, kindled hopes of a Federal Independence 
 under Charles Albert and a Liberal Pontiff. Three years 
 before the death of Gregory XVI., Gioberti, in a book which 
 deeply moved all Italian hearts, had prophesied the coming 
 of a reforming Pope who should mediate justly between 
 princes and people, and assert the moral supremacy of 
 Rome over the world. In 1846 his prophecy seemed likely 
 of fulfilment in the advent of Pius IX. Pius had attended 
 the conclave which was to elect Gregory's successor. So 
 little did he, a recently elected Cardinal, anticipate the 
 honour in store for himself, that he had brought with him 
 a copy of Gioberti's book as a humble offering to the new 
 Pope. One of his first acts as Pius IX. was to pardon the 
 political prisoners and exiles, numbering some thousands 
 in all. The enthusiasm of the populace knew no bounds. 
 The deliverer of Italy had arrived. All things suddenly 
 seemed possible. "To the religious, impulsive, ill-educated 
 average Italian, a Pope's sympathy meant more than all 
 the philosophy and idealism of Young Italy." That night, it 
 was said, every house in Rome was illuminated, with one 
 ominous exception — that of the Austrian Ambassador. Wild 
 rumours attached themselves to the new pontiff — that he
 
 xxvi Introduction 
 
 was " un gran' Carbonaro," or even the secret head of 
 "Young Italy," whispered some. But there were three 
 forces at work soon to shatter the popular idol — the Jesuits, 
 Metternich, and the Pope himself. The Jesuits wielded 
 their secret influence far and wide, and at Rome controlled 
 the police and civil service. They blocked the Pope at 
 every turn. Away in Vienna, where their power was great, 
 Metternich had pronounced a Liberal Pope " the greatest 
 misfortune of the age," and openly insulted him by fiUing 
 Ferrara, a Papal city, with Austrian troops. The Pope 
 himself, full of good intentions, was bewildered, one day 
 promising legal reforms and railway construction, the next 
 refusing to sanction a citizen guard, the third prohibiting 
 public meetings because they interrupted the studies of 
 youth I The people were clamouring to go to war with 
 Austria. Diplomatic negotiations, however, led Metternich 
 to withdraw the imperial troops from Ferrara (December i6, 
 1847). But the Pope had had enough of " modern progress." 
 " They are mistaken, who would see in the Council of State 
 instituted by me," he declared at its opening ceremony, 
 " the realisation of their Utopias and the germ of institutions 
 incompatible with the Pontifical sovereignty." The Sultan 
 was not the only " sick man" in Europe. 
 
 Mazzini watched this movement closely, and advised his 
 scattered followers to use the enthusiasm for national ends 
 at the sacrifice of republicanism, if necessary. In this year 
 he wrote several articles to the People's Joiirtial, in one 
 of which he foretold the coming storm. " Europe rapidly 
 approaches a tremendous crisis ; a supreme contest between 
 peoples and their despots, which no human power can 
 henceforth hinder, but which the active concurrence of all 
 the brave and good would render shorter and less severe 
 and whose final result will be a new map of Europe." _TJie._ 
 year of revolutions arrived— 1848 — "when all time's sea 
 was foam." From Palermo and Paris, Vienna and Berlin 
 came the shouts of the multitudes uprisen to reckon with 
 their rulers. The King of the French escaped in a cab, 
 and Metternich in a cart. The Austrian power was rapidly
 
 Introduction xxvii 
 
 crumbling in the northern towns of Italy. Mazzini hurried 
 to Paris and thence to Milan, where he had an enthusiastic 
 reception. But victory tarried. Dissensions, fomented 
 partly by Mazzini's presence, arose between monarchists 
 and republicans over the form of government to be set 
 up when the Austrians were routed ! The feeble indecision 
 and delay of Charles Albert, "the Wobbling King," led 
 to one disaster after another in the field, and the enemy, 
 under Radetzky, regained the lost ground. Ten years more 
 were to pass before the foreigner was finally ousted, and 
 then the honours were to fall to Cavour and Victor 
 Emmanuel. 
 
 In Rome, however, the fortunes of the Liberals were 
 improving so rapidly that the air of the Quirinal became 
 stifling. The Pope, following the ruling fashion, escaped 
 in a chaise to Gaeta. Rome was free. A provisional 
 government was set up which appealed to universal suffrage 
 to elect a Constituent Assembly of one hundred and fifty 
 members. Among the deputies elected were a general of 
 volunteers and his standard-bearer who had come from 
 the North, defeated but not beaten — Garibaldi and Mazzini. 
 Twenty years earlier Garibaldi had joined the ranks of 
 "Young Italy" at Marseilles, and then tasted of exile and 
 adventure in South America. The Assembly by an over- 
 whelming majority declared for a Republic, abolished the 
 hated temporal power of the Pope, but guaranteed him 
 liberty to exercise his spiritual office. Thus opened one 
 of the most moving pages in history. Mazzini had entered 
 the city "one evening early in March, with a deep sense 
 of awe, almost of worship." It is not difiicult to understand 
 the fascination of Rome, and the desire to see her capital 
 of a united Italy. But with Mazzini the desire had been 
 a master passion which went far beyond the dream of a 
 political centre. Gioberti looked to a reformed Papacy ; 
 but in Mazzini's vision "the city of the soul "was the Temple 
 of Humanity sending forth a new religion of duty, sacrifice, 
 and brotherhood. When they cheered his first rising in 
 the Assembly he reiterated his faith : "These manifestations
 
 xxviii Introduction 
 
 of admiration should not be addressed by you to me, but 
 rather by me to you," he said ; " for what Httle of good I 
 may have accomphshed, or attempted, has owed its in- 
 spiration to my life's talisman, Rome. In my heart I have 
 said, It is not possible that the City that has already lived 
 two lives, should not arise to see a third. After the Rome 
 of conquering soldiers, after the Rome of the triumphant 
 Word, so I kept saying to myself, there shall come the 
 Rome of virtue and of example ; after the City of the 
 Emperors, after that of the Popes, shall come that of 
 the People." It was a noble vision, seen by all good 
 men under one form or another. 
 
 Mazzini now endeavoured to unite the scattered republican 
 forces. Goaded by Austrian brutality, Charles Albert was 
 once more marching against Radetzky, but he was no match 
 for the old general and the Piedmontese suffered a crushing 
 defeat at Novara. The King abdicated in favour of his 
 eldest son Victor Emmanuel II, and four months later 
 died brokenhearted in a Portuguese monastery. In Rome 
 the news of Novara led to the election of Mazzini, Safifi and 
 Armellini as triumvirs, and from the Papal Court at Gaeta 
 this called forth an appeal to the Catholic Powers for " armed 
 intervention to free the States of the Church from the faction 
 of rogues." The response came from an unexpected quarter. 
 In the 5th Article of the French Constitution of 1848 it was 
 written, " France respects foreign nationalities ; her might 
 shall never be employed against the liberty of any people ! " 
 With what duplicity this promise was broken in " the 
 meanest of modern political crimes " can only be briefly 
 recounted here. French troops landed and marched on the 
 young sister-republic. Mazzini was an idealist, but he was 
 no coward. He would fight for a righteous principle. 
 There were virtues more precious than peace. A Committee 
 of War was formed to organise the defence under Roselli 
 and Garibaldi. On May 7th Ferdinand de Lesseps on 
 behalf of France came to terms with the Roman Republic. 
 He acted in good faith, but the agreement was a ruse of his 
 employers ; and the French general Oudinot laid siege to
 
 Introduction . xxix 
 
 the city. Mazzini was the soul and strength of the defence. 
 He does not appear to have been sanguine of victory, but he 
 was determined to leave a great republican example. *' His 
 defence of Rome raised the Italian character," wrote 
 Jowett. Unselfish, tireless, heedless of personal comfort, with 
 a heart soft as a child's, with a colossal belief in his divine 
 mission, this "pestiferous conspirator" displayed to the 
 subjects of the Pope a spiritual grandeur the like of which 
 had rarely if ever been seen in a Vicar of Christ through all 
 the ages of Roman Christendom. " Here in Rome," he told 
 the quarrelling deputies with unconscious irony, " we may 
 not be moral mediocrities." " Stiffness to principles, 
 tolerance to individuals," was to be the watchword. And 
 nobly he obeyed it. Smaller men would have wrought their 
 revenge on the Church which blocked Italian unity and 
 national aspiration. A word from the Triumvir at this 
 moment, and many a priest and church would have suffered. 
 But when the crowd used confessional boxes to make 
 barricades he ordered them to be taken back. He would 
 allow no degradation of sacred symbols. " It is the duty 
 of the government to preserve religion uncontaminated." 
 Similarly plotters were left free and the Press hardly 
 disturbed. After the French general had been driven back 
 on April 30 the prisoners taken in the fight were marched 
 to St. Peter's to be addressed in these words : " Frenchmen 
 and Italians, in this sublime and holy spot, let us together 
 offer our prayers to the Almighty, for the liberty of all people 
 and for universal fraternity !" They were then escorted to 
 the gates of the city and presented with a monster gift of 
 cigars for their comrades beyond the walls. This was the 
 gospel in action, neither papal nor imperial, but democratic. 
 The Triumvir occupied a little room in the Quirinal accessible 
 to high and low alike. He dined at a cheap restaurant for 
 two francs a day, lived during the siege on bread and raisins, 
 spending his slender stipend entirely on others. His only 
 luxury was a bunch of flowers sent to him daily by an 
 unknown hand. But the small band of heroes could not 
 withstand the overpowering numbers of the French. The
 
 XXX Introduction 
 
 losses were heavy, and among them dear frends of Mazzini 
 — Mameh the poet, Manara, the Lombard leader in the Five 
 Days of Milan, and many another. 
 
 Mazzini hoped for a republican rising in France which 
 would change the situation, but the Catholic party triumphed. 
 Garibaldi was brave, but vain and difficult to work with. 
 He sullenly refused to obey Roselli in the most critical hours 
 of the French attack, then roused himself to a great effort 
 when it was too late. On July ist the Assembly met and 
 voted surrender. Mazzini, unwilling to face the mournful 
 fact of defeat, protested to the last. " Monarchies may 
 capitulate, republics die and bear their testimony even to 
 martyrdom." Garibaldi marched out of the city at the head of 
 three thousand followers, to be pursued by the enemy and to 
 suffer great hardship. His wife, Anita, who always accom- 
 panied him, died amid the marshes of Comacchio. Ugo 
 Bassi, the eloquent and fearless and gentle friar, was shot by 
 the Austrians in the streets of Bologna. Mazzini — one 
 thinks of Gordon — lingered on in Rome for some days, 
 almost inviting assassination. "In two short months," wrote 
 Margaret Fuller, one of the noble band who had nursed the 
 wounded through the siege, " he had grown old ; all the vital 
 juices seemed exhausted ; . . . but he had never flinched, 
 never cjuailed ; had protested in the last hour against sur- 
 render, sweet and calm, but full of a more fiery purpose than 
 ever ; in him I revered the hero, and owned myself not of 
 that mould." 
 
 VII 
 
 From Rome Mazzini went to Switzerland, and thence to 
 England, where he was to remain, except for brief intervals, 
 to the closing years of his life. The task of liberating and 
 unifying Italy passed largely into the hands of diplomatists, 
 with whose devious ways he had such scant sympathy that 
 he often judged their motives unfairly — Cavour, Louis 
 Napoleon, Victor Emmanuel. Mazzini had repeatedly 
 expressed his willingness to place unity first and the republic 
 second, but he found it difficult to be faithful to this con-
 
 Introduction xxxi 
 
 cession. Banished from the scene of action, without money, 
 and dependent on secret informers, who rarely possessed 
 full or accurate information, his great powers of leadership 
 Nwere wasted on dark conspiracies and futile insurrections, 
 by which he hurt and hindered men who were working, like 
 himself, for a common country. Some of these men had 
 been ardent republicans, but had been convinced by the 
 disunion and failure of the Year of Revolutions that the 
 casual opposition of undisciplined forces would never drive 
 out the trained troops of the enemy. Daniel Manin, a 
 republican idealist with strong practical instincts backed 
 by a stainless life, in his defence of Venice against the 
 Austrians, had raised the Venetian character to heights as 
 heroic as those reached by the Romans under Mazzini. But 
 with Garibaldi and many old members of " Young Italy," 
 Manin had now come to believe that the help of the 
 Piedmontese army with its King and Minister were indis- 
 pensable to the redemption of Italy, and that the republic 
 must be postponed. Gioberti had awakened from his dreams 
 of a reformed Papacy, and had written a new book, in which 
 Piedmont figured as the regenerator of Italy with the help 
 of France. And it was to this policy that parties of all sorts 
 were coming. Mazzini held obstinately to the programme 
 of Savona, unable to imagine a profligate King and a cunning 
 Minister as the saviours of the nation. But "men fight to 
 lose the battle, and the thing they fought for comes about 
 in spite of their defeat, and when it comes it turns out not 
 to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for 
 what they meant under another name." The temporal 
 power of the Papacy ended and the unity of Italy was 
 achieved. A recent English historian divides the honours, 
 unequally, between the sword of Garibaldi and the brain 
 of Cavour, and says nothing of the soul of Mazzini. It is 
 a somewhat shallow judgment, but if it is meant to imply 
 that the Italy of 1870 was not what Mazzini had wished to 
 call into being, it may stand. "This medley of opportunists 
 and cowards and little Macchiavellis, that let themselves 
 be dragged behind the suggestion of the foreigner — I 
 
 b
 
 xxxii Introduction 
 
 thought to call up the soul of Italy, and I only see its 
 corpse." The Liberalism of Cavour had triumphed. The 
 old generation had " praised God ; the new generation 
 thought more of keeping its powder dry. The former had 
 had its poetry, its great literary works, its appeals to history ; 
 the latter wrote leaflets and pamphlets, and spoke through 
 the press, which had come into power since 1847. . . . The 
 heroic idealism had gone, and rationalism and science took 
 its place. The new spirit was matter-of-fact, thinking more 
 of the present than the future, fearful of pitching its hopes 
 too high, quietly, cautiously laying the foundations, deter- 
 mined to go on no quixotic ventures, but slowly prepare, 
 and only fight when the odds were on its side. Mazzini 
 flinched from no sacrifice ; he was ready to surrender the 
 present convenience and happiness of the whole community, 
 its family life, its trade, in a desperate struggle. The new 
 movement shrank from the terrible and impossible appeal ; 
 but it put its faith in discipline, it was willing for the sake 
 of union to sacrifice spontaneity, to be unfair to opponents, 
 to crush minorities." 
 
 The difference between the two protagonists could not 
 be better illustrated than by repeating a couple of anecdotes 
 which Mr. Myers put side by side. 
 
 " When Cavour was about six years old he was taken on 
 a posting journey. On one stage of this journey the horses 
 were unusually bad. The little boy asked who was re- 
 sponsible for the horses. He was told it was the postmaster. 
 He asked who appointed the postmaster. He was told it 
 was the syndic. He demanded to be taken at once to the 
 syndic to get the postmaster dismissed." 
 
 " Mazzini as a child was very delicate. When he was about 
 six years old he was taken for his first walk. For the first 
 time he saw a beggar, a venerable old man. He stood 
 transfixed, then broke from his mother, threw his arms 
 round the beggar's neck and kissed him, crying, ' Give him 
 something, mother, give him something.' ' Love him well, 
 lady,' said the aged man ; 'he is one who will love the 
 people.'"
 
 Introduction xxxiii 
 
 The ways of the children were the ways of the men. 
 Who can imagine Mazzini bartering Savoy and Nice at 
 Plombi^res, and negotiating the marriage of Prince 
 Napoleon and Princess Clotilde ? And in the article of 
 death one passed away protesting his belief in God, while 
 the other "retained a devoted priest to absolve his last 
 hour, and made his way into heaven itself by a stroke of 
 diplomacy." ' 
 
 The London to which Mazzini returned after the fall of 
 the Roman Republic was far less desolate than the London 
 of 1837. There were now old and new friends, not a few, 
 proud to welcome the Triunivir who had focussed in himself 
 the fairest hopes of an aspiring people, an 
 
 "established point of light whence rays 
 Traversed the world." 
 
 The homes of the Ashursts, the Stansfelds and others 
 were always open to him. He met many distinguished 
 men of the time. Swinburne sang his praises. But no 
 man was less easily seduced from the path of duty by the 
 temptations of friendship and wealth. Nor was he the 
 transcendentalist who turns cynic in the face of defeat. 
 His head was still full of schemes and his days full of toil 
 for the salvation of his country. 
 
 Open my heart, and you will see 
 Graved inside of it "Italy." 
 
 He worked incessantly to secure the " moral help " of 
 England, and gathered into the Society of the Friends of Italy 
 a number of the best Liberals of the day. England had 
 
 ' F. W. H. Myers, Essays Modern, p. 21. For a kindlier estimate see 
 the newly published papers of Senator Artom, Cavour's private secretary. 
 He describes his chiet"'s last moments in these words : 
 
 " Ou lui avail apporte -le viatique a sept heures du soir, a cinq heures 
 du matin on lui administra I'huile sainte. Quelques mots s'echapperent 
 encore de ses levres, " Italia e fatta . . . ormai la cosa va. . . . L' armonia 
 della religione e della civilta farii cessare le rivoluzioni in Europa." Ces 
 phrases entrecoupes par les rales de I'agonie temoignent les grandes 
 pensees qui occupaient cette vaste et noble intelligence a son dernier 
 moment. Cinq minutes avant sept heures tout etait fini."
 
 xxxiv Introduction 
 
 indeed become his second home. His dour father had died 
 in 1848 and his mother four years later. She had been his 
 supreme solace through the years of loneliness and struggle 
 — like Madame Ruffini, one of the brave mothers ' in whom 
 Italy revived.' "My mother," he writes, "seems to me to 
 be present, perhaps nearer than she was in her terrestrial 
 life. I feel more and more the sacredness of duties which 
 she recognised, and of a mission she approved. I have now 
 no mother on earth except my country, and I shall be true 
 to her, as my mother has been to me." She had left him 
 a small annuity, " wisely invested with obdurate trustees," so 
 that the money might not slip through his fingers into his 
 public work and charity. With the aid of earnings from 
 literary work, his income rarely rose to ^200, and of 
 this more than a third for some years went to educate the 
 children of the poor woman he had befriended. His little 
 room was littered with books and papers and clouded with 
 the smoke of cheap cigars — his one luxury. When Bentham 
 was planning Pantopticons and tabulating the Springs of 
 Action, mice played in his study and fed from his lap. As 
 became the apostle of a more soaring philosophy, Mazzini's 
 pets were birds, and they flew about freely as he wrote and 
 talked. Like most unselfish men with deep convictions, he 
 was an inspiring talker. Music and poetry were favourite 
 topics. Henry Sidgwick, we have recently learnt, was 
 much impressed by him. " London is a stimulating place," 
 he wrote to his mother in 1867; "one meets stimulating 
 people. I will tell you who is one — Mazzini. I met him 
 the other night at dinner, and he attacked me about 
 Spiritualism, and bore down upon me with such a current of 
 clear, eager argument — I was quite overwhelmed." No one 
 who met him forgot his honest eyes, " readily flashing into 
 indignation or humour, always with the latent expression of 
 exhaustless resolution." In spite of failing health he worked 
 on tenaciously, obstinately. '' I hear you are rather un- 
 well," he wrote to a friend. " Don't. It is absurd to be 
 ill, while nations are struggling for liberty." Once he was 
 arrested and imprisoned at Gaeta, where through the chinks
 
 Introduction xxxv 
 
 in the wall he saw the sea and sky as in the fortress of 
 Savona nearly forty years before. On his release he spent 
 a night secretly in Rome, and visited his mother's tomb 
 in Genoa. The monarchy had triumphed with the aid of 
 France. " He knew that the republic was afar off, that all 
 he could do now was quietly to educate his countrymen, 
 especially the working classes. He helped to organise the 
 friendly societies ; he advocated evening classes for work- 
 men, circulating popular libraries, the collection of a fund 
 to assist societies for co-operative production ; he founded 
 a paper, Roma del Popolo^ to spread his ideas. . . . He 
 published From the Council to God, and was delighted at 
 the success it met with in its English translation in the 
 Fortnightly. He was keenly interested in the English 
 movements for women's suffrage and against state regulation 
 of vice. But his chief work in these last years was to fight 
 the immature socialism of the time." 
 
 In his last message to the working men of Italy, he bade 
 them " love and work for this great, unhappy country of 
 ours, called to high destinies, but stayed upon the road by 
 those who cannot, will not know the road. This is the best 
 way you can have of loving me." He died in the house of 
 friends at Pisa, early in March 1872, and was buried beside 
 his mother, on one of the highest terraces in the cemetery 
 of Staglieno, outside his native city. 
 
 Mazzini'S writings may be divided into literary, social, and 
 political. Among his earliest were " Dell' Amor Patrio di 
 Dante " (1826 or 1827), published in " II Subalpino " 1837, and 
 contributions to the " Indicatore Genovese," founded by him 
 in 1828, and to the " Indicatore Livornese," also founded by 
 Mazzini after the suppression of the former journal, a fate 
 shared by the latter. His chief literary essays were com- 
 posed in England, in which country he lived for many years 
 as an exile from 1837: "Westminster Review" ("On the 
 Literary Movement in Italy," October 1837 ; "Paolo Sarpi,"
 
 xxxvi Introduction 
 
 April 1838); "Apostolato Popolare," founded in 1841 by 
 Mazzini for the Italian working-men in England (Dante, 
 1841 ; Luigi Angeloni, 1842 ; AdolfoBoyer, 1842); "Monthly 
 Chronicle" (" Present State of French Literature," March 
 1839; Lamennais, April 1839; Byron and Goethe, 1839; 
 Carlyle's "French Revolution," 1843); "Foreign Quarterly 
 Review "("On the Minor Works of Dante," April 1844); 
 " British and Foreign Review " (" On T. Carlyle, his Genius, 
 etc.," October 1843); "Revue Repubhcaine" ("De 1' Art en 
 Italic"); Essay on Foscolo's Commentary of the " Divina 
 Commedia," 1842 ; Analytical review of the life and writings 
 of G. Sand, to an edition of " La Petite Fadette," 1850.1 
 
 Among his Social and Political writings are : A Letter to 
 Carlo Alberto of Savoy, 1831 ; " Delia Guerra d' Insurrezione 
 conveniente all' Itaha," 1832, 1853 (with preface by Author) ; 
 "Deir Ungheria," 1832 ; " Dell' Unita Italiana," 1833 ; Letter 
 to General Ramorino, 1834: "alia Gioventu Italiana," 1S34 ; 
 on the Encyclical of Gregory XVI., 1834 ; on the Revolution- 
 ary Initiative ("Revue Repubhcaine"), 1835; "Faith and 
 the Future" (written in French), 1835 ; "The Patriots and 
 the Clergy," 1835; "The Question of the Exiles" ("La 
 Jeune Suisse "), 1836 ; " On the Present Condition and Future 
 of Italy "(" Monthly Chronicle"), 1839; "On the Duty of 
 Man " (the first four chapters appeared in " Apostolato 
 Popolare," 1844, the remainder in " Pensiero ed Azione " and 
 "Unita Italiana," 1858); "Thoughts upon Democracy in 
 Europe" ("People's Journal"), 1847. Extra pages were 
 added by the author for the Italian Edition of his works, 
 published in 1865 : Letter to Pius IX. on the Unity of the 
 Italian States, 1847 ; on his Encyclical Letter, i85o(" L' Itaha 
 del Popolo ") ; The Programma of the " Roma del Popolo," 
 1 87 1. His latest published writing was an essay in the 
 " Fortnightly " on Renan's " Reforme Morale et Intellect- 
 uelle," February 1874. 
 
 Editions of Works, Letters, etc. : " Scritti editi ed inediti " 
 (edited at first by the author, the later volumes by Saffi), 
 18 vols., 1861-91 ; "Life and Writings," 6 vols., 1864-70 ; 
 in 4 vols., 1897; "Prose Politiche," with preface by M.
 
 Introduction xxxvii 
 
 Consigli, 1848, 1849; " Discorsi Politici," 1849; English 
 translation of " Thoughts upon Democracy in Europe " and 
 "On the Duties of Man," by E. A. Venturi, 1875 ; " Pubbli- 
 cazione Nazionale delle Opere di G. M." ("La Questione 
 d'Oriente," " Lettere Slave," " Politica Internazionale"), 
 second edition, 1877 ; Inedited Letters, 1872 ; Letters to 
 Daniel Stern (1864-72), 1873 ; French Letters (Paris), 1873 ; 
 "Lettere . . . alle Societa Operaie d' Italia scritte nel 
 decennio 1861-71, etc," 1873; other letters published (Turin) 
 1887, (Paris) 1895 ; Lettere Inedite, edited by L. O. de 
 Rosales, 1898 ; To A. Saffi and the Craufurd Family (1850-72), 
 edited by Mazzatinti, 1905 ; Essays, republished and edited 
 by W. Clarke 1887 ; Essays, Selected (Literary, Political, 
 and Religious), edited by E. Rhys (Camelot Classics), 1887 ; 
 Essays, most of them translated for the first time by T. Okey, 
 edited by B. King, 1894 (with these is given an unpublished 
 letter of uncertain date). 
 
 Life and Work : Simoni, 1870 ; Nardi, 1872 ; Memoir, by 
 E. A. Venturi, 1875, 1877 ; Mario, 1885 ; Comte de Schack, 
 
 1891 ; Linton, " Recollections of Mazzini and his Friends," 
 
 1892 ; Bolton King (Temple Biographies), 1902 ; F. Donaver, 
 1903 ; Prefatory. Memoirs to editions of Essays (see above). 
 Mazzini himself supplied autobiographical notices to the 
 collected edition of his Works.
 
 . TO THE ITALIAN WORKING 
 
 CLASS 
 
 To you, sons and daughters of the people, I dedicate 
 this little book, wherein I have pointed out the principles 
 in the name and strength of which you may, if you so 
 will, accomplish your mission in Italy ; a mission of 
 republican progress for all and of emancipation for 
 yourselves. Let those who are specially favoured by 
 circumstances or in understanding, and able to com- 
 prehend these principles more easily, explain and comment 
 on them to the others, and may that spirit of love inspire 
 them with which, as I wrote, I thought on your griefs and 
 on your virgin aspirations towards the new life which — 
 once the unjust inequality now stifling your faculties is 
 overcome — you will kindle in the Italian country. 
 
 I loved you from my first years. The republican 
 instincts of my mother taught me to seek out among 
 my fellows the Man, not the merely rich and powerful 
 individual ; and the simple unconscious virtue of my 
 father accustomed me to admire, rather than conceited 
 and pretentious semi-knowledge, the silent and unnoticed 
 virtue of self-sacrifice so often found in you. Later on 
 I gathered from the history of our country that the 
 true life of Italy is the life of the people, and that the 
 slow work of the centuries has constandy tended, amid 
 the shock of different races and the superficial transitory 
 changes wrought by usurpations and conquests, to pre- 
 pare the great democratic National Unity. And then, 
 thirty years ago, I gave myself to you. 
 
 I saw that the Country, the United Country of free 
 and equal men could not issue from an aristocracy
 
 2 To the Italian Working Class 
 
 which among us has never had initiative or collective 
 life, nor from the monarchy which insinuated itself into 
 our midst in the sixteenth century in the track of the 
 foreigner without a mission of its own and without any 
 thought of unity or emancipation ; but must issue 
 from the people of Italy alone. And I said so. I saw 
 that it was needful for you to shake off the yoke of hire^ 
 and little by little, through the means of free association, 
 make Labour master of the soil and of the capital of Italy ; 
 and before the French socialistic sects had come to 
 confuse the question, I said so. I saw that Italy, such 
 as our souls prefigured her, could not exist until a Moral 
 Law, acknowledged as higher than all those now put as 
 intermediaries between God and man, should overthrow 
 the basis of every tyrannic authority, the Papacy. And 
 I said so. Nor did the furious accusations, calumnies, 
 and derision hurled at me ever make me betray you or 
 your cause or desert the banner of the future, not even 
 when you yourselves — led astray by the teachings of 
 men, idolaters rather than believers — forsook me for 
 those who, having trafficked in your blood, turned their 
 looks away from you. The strong and sincere hand- 
 clasp of some of the best of you, sons and daughters of 
 the people, comforted me for the desertion of others and 
 for the many most bitter disillusionments inflicted on 
 my soul by men whom I had loved well and who had 
 professed to love me. Not many years of life are left to 
 me, but the bond sealed with those few of you shall not 
 be broken by anything which may come until my last 
 day ; and perhaps will live beyond it. 
 
 Think of me as I think of you. Let us be as brothers 
 in our affection for our Country. In you essentially her 
 future lies. 
 
 But you will not found this future for the Country 
 and for yourselves, unless you rid yourselves of two 
 maladies which infect the well-to-do classes too much 
 to-day, though I hope for a short while only, and threaten 
 to lead Italian progress astray; Machiavelism and 
 Materialism. The first, a mean travesty of the doctrine 
 of a great but unhappy man, leads you away from love
 
 To the Italian Working Class 3 
 
 and from the frank, bold, and loyal adoration of truth ; 
 the second precipitates you, through the worship of self- 
 i?iterest, into egoism and anarchy. 
 
 If you would withdraw yourselves from beneath the 
 arbitrary rule and tyranny of men, you must adore God. 
 And in the war which is being fought in the world 
 between Good and Evil, you must enrol yourselves 
 under the Banner of Good and combat Evil without 
 truce, rejecting every dubious course, every cowardly 
 dealing, and every hypocrisy of leaders who seek to com- 
 promise between the two. On the path of the first you 
 will have me for comrade as long as I live. 
 
 And because these two lies present themselves to you 
 too often in seductive guise and with the allurement of 
 hopes which only the worship of God and of Truth can 
 convert \n\.o facts, I have felt myself obliged to warn 
 you against them by writing this book. 1 love you too 
 well to flatter your passions or to indulge the golden 
 dreams with which others try to win your favour. My 
 voice may seem harsh and too insistent in teaching you 
 the necessity of sacrifice and virtue towards others. But 
 I know, and you who are good and unspoiled by false 
 doctrine and by riches will understand before long, that 
 every right you have can only spring from a duty 
 fulfilled. 
 
 Farewell. Hold me now and for ever your brother. 
 
 GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 
 April 2T,, i860.
 
 THE DUTIES OF MAN
 
 THE DUTIES OF MAN 
 
 TO THE ITALIAN WORKING-MEN 
 
 I WANT to speak to you of your duties. I want to speak 
 to you, as my heart dictates to me, of the most sacred 
 things which we know — of God, of Humanity, of the 
 Fatherland, of the Family. Listen to me with love, even 
 as I shall speak to you with love. My words are words 
 of conviction matured by long years of sorrow and of 
 observation and of study. The duties which I am going 
 to point out to you I strive and shall strive as long as 
 I live to fulfil, to the utmost of my power. I may make 
 mistakes, but my heart is true. I may deceive myself, 
 but I will not deceive you. Hear me therefore as a 
 brother ; judge freely among yourselves, whether it 
 seems to you that I speak the truth ; abandon me if 
 yoii think that I preach what is false ; but follow me 
 and do according to my teaching if you find me an 
 apostle of truth. To be mistaken is a misfortune to be 
 pitied ; but to know the truth and not to conform one's 
 actions to it is a crime which Heaven and Earth 
 condemn. 
 
 Why do I speak to you of your duties before speaking 
 to you of your rights} Why iiLa^-SOciety in which all, 
 voluntarily or involuntarily, -oppress you, in which the 
 exercise of all the rights which belong to man is con- 
 stantly denied you, in which misery is your lot, and 
 what is called happiness is^ for other classes of men, 
 why do I speak to you of self-sacrifice and not of 
 conquest ; of virtue, moral improvement, education, and
 
 8 The Duties of Man 
 
 not of material well-being? This is a question wliich 
 I must answer before going further, because here pre- 
 ^cisely lies the difference between our school and many 
 ^i^others which are being preached to-day in Europe ; 
 f><l;jecause, moreover, it is a question which rises readily 
 "^'v^h the indignant mind of the suffering working-man. 
 vV ^.yx IVe are poor, enslaved, unhappy ; speak to us of better 
 r^) "^ Material conditiofts, of liberty, of happiness. Tell us if 
 ^ ,ywe are doomed to suffer for ever, or if we too may eiijoy 
 ^ ^ in our turn. Preach Duty to our masters, to the classes 
 .%J\'^above us zvhich treat us like machines, and monopolise 
 " ^ the blessings which belong to all. To us speak of rights ; 
 \ speak of the means of vindicating them; speak of our 
 p strength. Wait till we have a recognised existence ; then 
 you shall speak to us of deities and of sacrifice. This is 
 what many of our working-men say, and follow teachers 
 and associations which respond to their desires. They 
 forget one thing only, and that is, that the doctrine 
 which they invoke has been preached for the last fifty 
 years without producing the slightest material improve- 
 ment in the condition of the working-people. 
 
 For the last fifty years whatever has been done for 
 the cause of progress and of good against absolute 
 governments and hereditary aristocracies has been done 
 in the name of the Rights of Man ; in the name of 
 liberty as the means, and of ivell-being as the object 
 of existence. All the acts of the French Revolution 
 and of the revolutions which followed and imitated it 
 were consequences of a Declaration of the Rights of 
 Man. All the works of the philosophers who prepared 
 it were based upon ajhgQry of liberty, and upon the 
 need of making known to every individual his own 
 rights. All the revolutionary schools preached that nian 
 is born for happiness, that he has the right to seek it 
 by all the means in his power, that no one has the 
 right to impede him in this search, and that he has 
 the right of overthrowing all the obstacles which he may 
 encounter on his path. And the obstacles were over- 
 thrown ; liberty was conquered. It endured for years 
 in many countries ; in some it still endures. Has the 
 
 \^/
 
 The Duties of Man t i 
 
 condition of the people improved ? Have the milUons 
 who live by the daily labour of their hands gained the 
 least fraction of the well-being hoped for and promised 
 to them ? 
 
 No ; the condition of the people has not improved ; 
 rather it has grown and grows worse in nearly every 
 country, and especially here where I write the price 
 of the necessaries of life has gone on continually rising, 
 the wages of the working-man in many branches of 
 industry falling, and the population multiplying. In 
 nearly every country the lot of workers has become 
 more uncertain, more precarious, and the labour crises 
 which condemn thousands of working-men to idleness 
 for a time have become more frequent. The yearly 
 increase of emigration from one country to another, and 
 from Europ^^fo other parts of the world, and the ever- 
 growing number of beneficent institutions, the increase 
 of poor rates and provisions for the destitute, are enough 
 to prove this. The latter prove also that public attention 
 is waking more and more to the ills of the people ; 
 but their inability to lessen those ills to any visible 
 extent points to a no less continual increase of poverty 
 among the classes which they endeavour to help. 
 
 And nevertheless, in these last fifty years, the sources 
 of social wealth and the sum of material blessings have 
 steadily increased. Production has doubled. Commerce, 
 amid .continual crises, inevitable in the utter absence 
 of organisation, has acquired a greater force of activity 
 and a wider sphere for its operations. Communication 
 has almost everywhere been made secure and rapid, 
 and the price of commodities has fallen in consequence 
 of the diminished cost of transport. And, on the other 
 hand, the idea of rights inherent in human nature is 
 to-day generally accepted ; accepted in word and, hypo- 
 critically, even by those who seek to evade it in deed. 
 Why, then, has the condition of the people not improved ? 
 Why is the consumption of products, instead of being 
 divided equally among all the members of the social 
 body in Europe, concentrated in the hands of a small 
 number of men forming a new aristocracy? Why has
 
 8 The Duties of Man 
 
 the new impulse given to industry and commerce pro- 
 duced, not the well-being of the many, but the luxury 
 <^f the few? 
 t A1K'' '^he answer is clear to those who will look a little 
 . jCWJclose^ into things. Men are creatures of education, 
 J^^ and act only according to the principle of education 
 given to them. The men who have promoted revolu- 
 tions hitherto have based them upon the idea of the 
 rights belonging to the individual ; the revolutions 
 ( conquered liberty — individual liberty, liberty of teaching, 
 '; liberty of belief, liberty of trade, liberty in everything 
 [ and for everybody. But of what use was the recognition 
 of their rights to those who had no means of exercising 
 them ? What did liberty of teaching mean to those 
 who had neither time nor means to profit by it, or 
 liberty of trade to those who had nothing to trade with, 
 neither capital nor credit ? In all the countries where 
 these principles were proclaimed society was composed 
 of a small number of individuals who possessed the 
 land, the credit, the capital, and of vast multitudes of 
 men who had nothing but their own hands and were 
 forced to give the labour of them to the former class, 
 on any terms, in order to live, and forced to spend 
 the whole day in material and monotonous toil. For 
 these, constrained to battle with hunger, what was liberty 
 but an illusion and a bitter irony ? To make it anything 
 else it would have been necessary for the men of the 
 well-to-do classes to consent to reduce the hours of 
 labour, to increase the remuneration, to institute free 
 and uniform education for the masses, to make the 
 instruments of labour accessible to all, and to provide 
 a bonus fund for the working-man endowed with 
 capacity and good intentions. But why should they do 
 it ? Was not ivell-being the supreme object in life ? 
 Were not material blessings desirable before all other 
 things ? Why should they lessen their own enjoyment 
 for the advantage of others ? Let those who could, help 
 themselves. When society has secured to everybody 
 who can use them the free exercise of the rights 
 belonging to human nature, it does all that is required
 
 The Duties of Man 1 1 
 
 of it. If there be any one who is unable from the 
 fatahty of his own circumstances to exercise any of these 
 rights, he must resign himself and not blame others. 
 
 It was natural that they should say thus, and thus, in 
 fact, they did say. And this attitude of mind towards 
 the poor in the classes privileged by fortune soon became 
 the attitude of every individual towards every other. 
 Each man looked after his own rights and the improve- 
 ment of his own condition without seeking to provide for 
 others ; and when his rights clashed with those of others, 
 there was war ; not a war of blood, but of gold and of 
 cunning ; a war less manly than the other, but equally 
 destructive ; cruel war, in which those who had the 
 means and were strong relentlessly crushed the weak or 
 the unskilled. In this continual warfare, men were 
 educated in egoism and in greed for material welfare 
 exclusively. Liberty of belief destroyed all community 
 of faith. Liberty of education produced moral anarchy. 
 Men without a common tie, without unity of religious 
 belief and of aim, and whose sole vocation was enjoy- 
 ment, sought every one his own road, not heeding if in 
 pursuing it they were trampling upon the heads of their 
 brothers — brothers in name and enemies in fact. To 
 this we are come to-day, thanks to the theory of rights. 
 
 Certainly rights exist ; but where the rights of an 
 individual come into conflict with those of another, 
 how can we hope to reconcile and harmonise them, 
 without appealing to something superior to all rights ? 
 And where the rights of an individual, or of many 
 individuals, clash with the rights of the Country, to what 
 tribunal are we to appeal ? If the right to well-being., to 
 the greatest possible well-being, belongs to every living 
 person, who will solve the difficulty between the working- 
 man and the manufacturer ? If the right to existence is 
 the first and inviolable right of every man, who shall 
 demand the sacrifice of that existence for the benefit of 
 other men ? Will you demand it in the name of Country, 
 of Society, of the multitude of your brothers ? What is 
 Country, in the opinion of those of whom I speak, but 
 the place in which our individual rights are most secure ?
 
 12 The Duties of Man 
 
 What is Society but a collection of men who have agreed 
 to bring the strength of the many in support of the rights 
 of each ? And after having taught the individual for 
 fifty years that Society is established for the purpose of 
 assuring to him the exercise of his rights, would you ask 
 him to sacrifice them all to Society, to submit himself, 
 if need be, to continuous toil, to prison, to exile, for the 
 sake of improving -it ? After having preached to him 
 everywhere that the object of life is well-being, would 
 you all at once bid him give up well-being and life itself 
 to free his country from the foreigner, or to procure 
 better conditions for a class which is not his own? 
 After having talked to him for years of wa/d^r/a/ interests, 
 how can you maintain that, finding wealth and power in 
 his reach, he ought not to stretch out his hand to grasp 
 them, even to the injury of his brothers ? 
 
 Italian Working-men, this is not a chance thought ot 
 my mind, without a foundation in fact. It is history, 
 the history of our own times, a history the pages of 
 which drip with blood, the blood of the people. Ask all 
 the men who transformed the revolution of 1830 into a 
 mere substitution of one set of persons for another, and, 
 for example, made the bodies of your French comrades, 
 who were killed fighting in the Three Days, into stepping- 
 stones to raise themselves to power ; all their doctrines, 
 before 1830, were founded on the old theory of the 
 rights of man, not upon a belief in his duties. You call 
 them to-day traitors and apostates, and yet they were 
 only consistent with their own doctrine. They fought 
 with sincerity against the Government of Charles X. 
 because that Government was directly hostile to the 
 classes from which they sprang, and violated and 
 endeavoured to suppress their rights. They fought in 
 the name of the well-being which they did not possess 
 as much of as they thought they ought to have. Some 
 were persecuted for freedom of thought ; others, men 
 of powerful mind, saw themselves neglected, shut out 
 from offices occupied by men of capacity inferior to 
 their own. Then the wrongs of the people angered 
 them also. Then they wrote boldly and in good faith
 
 The Duties of Man 13 
 
 about the rights which belong to every man. After- 
 wards, when their own pohtical and intellectual rights 
 had been secured, when the path to office was opened 
 to them, when they had conquered the ivell-being which 
 they sought, they forgot the people, forgot that the 
 millions, inferior to them in education and in aspirations, 
 were seeking the exercise of other rights and the 
 achievement of ivell-being of another sort, and they set 
 their minds at rest and troubled no longer about 
 anybody but themselves. Why call them traitors ? 
 Why not rather call their doctrine treacherous ? 
 
 There lived and wrote at that time in France a man 
 whom you ought never to forget, more powerful in mind 
 than all of them put together. He was our opponent 
 then ; but he believed in Duty ; in the duty of sacrificing 
 the whole existence to the common good, to the pursuit 
 and triumph of Truth. He studied the men and the 
 circumstances of the time deeply, and did not allow 
 himself to be led astray by applause, or to be dis- 
 couraged by disappointment. When he had tried one 
 way and failed, he tried yet another for the amelioration 
 of the masses. And when the course of events had 
 shown him that there was one power alone capable of 
 achieving it, when the people had proved themselves in 
 the field of action more virtuous and more believinsr 
 than all those who had pretended to deal with their 
 cause, he, Lamenna is. author of the Words of a 
 Believer, which you have all read, became the best 
 apostle of the cause in which we are brothers. There 
 you see in him, and in the men of whom I have been 
 speaking, the difference between the men of rights and 
 those of dtity. To the first the acquisition of their 
 individual rights, by withdrawing stimulus, proves a 
 sufficient check to further effort ; the work of the second 
 only ceases here on earth with life. 
 
 And among the peoples who are completely enslaved, 
 where the conflict has very different dangers, where 
 every step made towards a better state of things is 
 signed with the blood of a martyr, where the operations 
 against injustice in high places are necessarily secret and
 
 14 The Duties of Man 
 
 lack the consolation of publicity and of praise, what obliga- 
 tion, what stimulus to constancy can maintain upon the path 
 of progress men who degrade the holy social war which we 
 carry on to a mere battle for their rights ? I speak, be it 
 understood, of the generality and not of the exceptions 
 to be met with in all schools of thought. When the hot 
 blood and the impulse of reaction against tyranny 
 which naturally draw youth into the conflict have calmed 
 down, what can prevent these men, after a few years- 
 of effort, after the disappointments inevitable in any 
 such enterprise, from growing weary? Why should 
 they not prefer any sort of repose to an unquiet 
 existence, agitated by continual struggles and danger,^ 
 and liable to end any day in imprisonment, or the 
 scaffold, or exile ? It is the too common story of most 
 of the Italians of to-day, imbued as they are with the old 
 French ideas ; a very sad story, but how can it be 
 altered except by changing the principle with which they 
 start as their guide? How and in whose name are they 
 to be convinced that danger and disappointment ought 
 to make them stronger, that they have got to fight not • 
 for a few years, but for their whole lives ? Who shall 
 say to a man. Go on struggling for your rights, when 
 to struggle for them costs him dearer than to abandon 
 them ? 
 
 And even in a society constituted on a juster basis 
 than our own, who shall convince a believer in the 
 theory of rights solely that he has to work for the 
 common purpose and devote himself to the development 
 of the social idea ? Suppose he should rebel ; suppose 
 he should feel himself strong and should say to you ; 
 / break the social compact ; my inclinations, my faculties, 
 call me elsewhere ; I have a sacred and inviolable right 
 to develop them, and I choose to be at war with everybody : 
 what answer can you give him while he keeps to his 
 theory of rights ? What right have you, because you are 
 a majority, to compel his obedience to laws which do not 
 accord with his desires and with his individual aspirations ? 
 What right have you to punish him if he violates them ? 
 Rights belong equally to every individual; the fact of living
 
 The Duties of Man 17 
 
 togCLOwn old age : how are you to educate yourselves 
 Societ>bits of economy? Many of you are compelled 
 individuLV to separate your children, we will not say 
 individual reful bringing-up — what sort of bringing-up 
 
 those who avives of working-men give their children ? 
 
 in the wider feilovnd the watchful eye of their mothers, 
 executioner, of thtit, for the sake of a few halfpence, 
 now have used such vir in factories : how, in such 
 want peace ; that is tyra'*'ection unfold itself and be 
 education. '^e rights of citizens, nor any 
 
 Education, we have said ; a vote, in the laws which 
 which sums up our whole doctr ; how should you feel 
 agitating our century is a question -eal for the State, or 
 we have to do is not to establish a i« is not dealt out 
 by violence. An order of things so est^e other classes : 
 tyrannical even when it is better than the -e for justice ? 
 to overthrow by force the brute force which sympathy : 
 to-day to every attempt at improvement^ and the- ^ You 
 for the approval of the nation, free to express . 
 what we believe to be the best order of things au 
 every possible means educate men to develop it and v 
 in conformity with it. The theory of rights enables ut, 
 to rise and overthrow obstacles, but not to found a strong 
 and lasting accord between all the elements which com- 
 pose the nation. With the theory of happiness, of ivell- 
 being^ as the primary aim of existence we shall only form 
 egoistic men, worshippers of the material, who will carry 
 the old passions into the new order of things and corrupt 
 it in a few months. We have therefore to find a 
 principle of education superior to any such theory, which 
 shall guide men to better things, teach them constancy 
 in self-sacrifice and link them with their fellow men 
 without making them dependent on the ideas of a single 
 man or on the strength of all. And this principle is Duty. 
 We must convince men, that they, sons of one only God, 
 must obey one only law, here on earth ; that each one of 
 them must live, not for himself, but for others ; that the 
 object of their life is not to be more or less happy, but 
 to make themselves and others better ; that to fight 
 against injustice and error for the benefit of their brothers
 
 1 6 The Duties of Man 
 
 Cieg- 
 
 is not only a ri^ht, but a duty ; a duty not to be p" 
 lected without sin,— the duty of their whole life. ^'ind me 
 Italian Working-men, my Brothers ! understar rig/its is 
 fully. When I say that the knowledge of the'-preciable or 
 not enough to enable men to effect any pj 1 enounce these 
 lasting improvement, I do not ask you U exist except as a 
 rights; I only say that they cannot that one must begin 
 consequence of duties fulfilled, anr^e at the former. And 
 with the latter in order to arrv^g happiness, well-being, or 
 when I say that by proposinm of existence, we run the 
 material interest as the o^ I do not mean that you should 
 risk of producing egoists ^^se things. I say that material 
 never strive after th'"->ne, and not as a means, but as an 
 interests pursued alrto this most disastrous result. When 
 end, lead always '"rors, the old Romans asked 'for nothing 
 under the Empo amusements, they became the most abject 
 but bread anrVable, and after submitting to the stupid and 
 race conceit tyranny of the Emperors they basely fell into 
 ferocious to the invading Barbarians. In France and 
 slaver^-'vhere the enemies of all social progress have sown 
 else-Truption and tried to divert men's minds from ideas 
 cr of change by furthering the development of material 
 ■ activity. And shall we help the enemy with our own 
 hands ? Material improvement is essential, and we shall 
 strive to win it for ourselves ; but not because the one 
 thing necessary for man is to be well fed and housed, 
 but rather because you cannot have a sense of your own 
 dignity or any moral development while you are engaged, 
 as at the present day, in a continual duel with want. 
 You work ten or twelve hours a day : how can you find 
 time to educate yourselves? Most of you earn hardly 
 enough to keep yourselves and your famiUes : how can 
 you then find meatis to educate yourselves? The 
 uncertainty of your employment and the frequent inter- 
 ruptions in it cause you to alternate between too much 
 work and periods of idleness : how are you to acquire 
 habits of order, regularity, and assiduity ? The scanti- 
 ness of your earnings does away with any hope of saving 
 enough to be useful some day to your children, or to
 
 The Duties of Man 17 
 
 your own old age : how are you to educate yourselves 
 into habits of economy? Many of you are compelled 
 by poverty to separate your children, we will not say 
 from the careful bringing-up — what sort of bringing-up 
 can the poor wives of working-men give their children ? — 
 but from the love and the watchful eye of their mothers, 
 and to send them out, for the sake of a few halfpence, 
 to unwholesome labour in factories : how, in such 
 conditions, can family affection unfold itself and be 
 ennobled ? You have not the rights of citizens, nor any 
 participation, by election or by vote, in the laws which 
 regulate your actions and your life : how should you feel 
 the pride of citizenship or have any zeal for the State, or 
 sincere affection for the laws ? Justice is not dealt out 
 to you with the same equal hand as to the other classes : 
 whence, then, are you to learn respect and love for justice ? 
 Society treats you without a shadow of sympathy : 
 whence are you to learn sympathy with society ? You 
 need, then, a change in your material conditions to enable 
 you to develop morally ; you need to work less so as to 
 have some hours of your day to devote to the improve- 
 ment of your minds ; you need a sufficient remuneration 
 of your labour to put you in a position to accumulate 
 savings, and so set your minds at rest about the future, 
 and to purify yourselves above all of every sentiment of 
 retaliation, every impulse of revenge, every thought 
 of injustice towards those who have been unjust to you. 
 You must strive, then, for this change, and you will 
 obtain it, but you must strive for it as a means, not as an 
 end; strive for it from a sense of duty, not only as a 
 right; strive for it in order to make yourselves better, 
 not only to make yourselves materially happy. If not, 
 what difference would there be between you and your 
 tyrants ? They are tyrants precisely because they do 
 not think of anything but well-being, pleasure and 
 power. 
 
 To make yourselves better ; this must be the aim of 
 your life. You cannot make yourselves permanently less 
 unhappy except by improving yourselves. Tyrants will 
 arise by the thousand among you, if you fight only in the
 
 i8 The Duties of Man 
 
 name of material interests, or of a particular organisation. 
 A change of social organisation makes little difference if 
 you and the other classes keep the passions and the 
 egoism of to-day ; organisations are like certain plants 
 which yield poison or remedies according to the way in 
 which they are administered. Good men make bad 
 organisations good, and bad men make good organisa- 
 tions bad. You have got to improve the classes which, 
 voluntarily or involuntarily, oppress you to-day, and 
 convince them of their duties ; but you will never 
 succeed in this unless you begin by making yourselves 
 better as far as possible. 
 
 When therefore you hear men who preach the necessity 
 of a social transformation telling you that they can 
 accomplish it by invoking your rights only, be grateful 
 to them for their good intentions, but distrustful of the 
 outcome. The ills of the poor man are known, in part 
 at least, to the well-to-do classes; known but not felt 
 In the general indifference born of the absence of a 
 common faith ; in the egoism, inevitably resulting from 
 the continual preaching through so many years of the 
 doctrine of material well-being, those who do not suffer 
 have grown accustomed little by little to consider these 
 ills as a sad necessity of the social order and to leave 
 the trouble of remedying them to the generations to come. 
 The difficulty is not to convince them, but to shake them 
 out of inertia and to induce them, when they are con- 
 vinced, to act, to associate themselves, to unite with 
 you in brotherly fellowship for the purpose of creating 
 such a social organisation as shall put an end, as far 
 as the conditions of humanity allow, to your ills and 
 to their own fears. Now, this is a work of faith, of 
 faith in the mission which God has given to the human 
 creature here upon earth ; of faith in the responsibility 
 weighing upon all those who do not fulfil that mission, 
 and in the duty which bids every one work continually, 
 and with self-sacrifice, for the cause of Truth. All possible 
 theories of rights and of material well-being can only 
 lead you to attempts which, so long as they remain 
 isolated and dependent on your strength only, will not
 
 The Duties of Man 19 
 
 succeed, but can only bring about the worst of social 
 crimes, a civil war between class and class. 
 
 Italian Working-men, my Brothers ! When Christ came 
 and changed the face of the world, He did not speak 
 of- rights to the rich, who had no need to conquer them ; 
 nor to the poor, who would perhaps have abused them, 
 in imitation of the rich. He did not speak of utility 
 or of self-interest to a people whom utility and self- 
 interest had corrupted. He spoke of Duty, He spoke 
 of Love, of Sacrifice, of Faith : He said that they 
 only should be first among all who had done good to 
 all by their work. And these thoughts, breathed into 
 the ear of a society which had no longer any spark 
 of life, reanimated it, conquered the millions, conquered 
 the world, and caused the education of the human race 
 to progress a degree. Italian Working-men ! we live in 
 an epoch like Christ's. We live in the midst of a 
 society rotten as that of the Roman Empire, and feel 
 in our souls the need of reviving and transforming it, 
 of associating all its members and its workers in one 
 single faith, under one single law, and for one purpose ; 
 the free and progressive development of all the faculties 
 which God has planted in His creatures. We seek the 
 reign of God upon earth as in heaven, or better, that 
 the earth shall be a preparation for heaven, and society 
 an endeavour towards a progressive approach to the 
 Divine Idea, 
 
 But every act of Christ's represented the faith which 
 He preached, and round Him there were apostles who 
 embodied in their acts the faith which they had accepted. 
 Be such as they, and you will conquer. Preach Duty 
 to the men of the classes above you, and fulfil, as far 
 as possible, your own duties ; preach virtue, sacrifice, 
 love ; and be yourselves virtuous and prompt to self- 
 sacrifice and love. Declare with courage your needs 
 and your ideas ; but without wrath, without vindictive- 
 ness, without threats. The most powerful threat, if there 
 are any who need threats, is firm, not angry, speech. 
 While you propagate among your companions the 
 conception of their future destinies, the conception of
 
 20 The Duties of Man 
 
 a nation which will give them a name, education, work, 
 and fair wages, together with the self-respect and vocation 
 of men, while you kindle their spirit for the inevitable 
 struggle for which they must prepare themselves, so that 
 they may conquer all this in spite of all the forces 
 of our evil government and of the foreigner, strive to 
 instruct yourselves, to grow better, and to educate your- 
 selves to the full knowledge and to the practice of your 
 duties. This is an impossible task for the masses in 
 a great part of Italy ; no plan of popular education 
 could be realised among us without a change in the 
 material condition of the people, and without a political 
 revolution ; they who deceive themselves into hoping 
 for it, and preach it as an indispensable preparation for 
 any attempt at emancipation, preach a gospel of inertia, 
 nothing else. But the few among you whose circum- 
 stances are somewhat better, and to whom a sojourn in 
 foreign lands has afforded more liberal means of education, 
 can do it, and therefore ought to do it. And these 
 few, once imbued with the true principles upon which 
 the education of a people depends, will be enough 
 to spread them among the thousands as a guide for 
 their path and a protection from the fallacies and the 
 false doctrines which will come to waylay them.
 
 II 
 
 GOD 
 
 The origin of your duties is in God. The definition 
 of your duties is found in His law. The progressive 
 discovery and the application of His law is the task of 
 Humanity. 
 
 God exists. I do not need nor do I wish to prove it 
 to you ; to try to do so would seem to me blasphemy, 
 as to deny it would seem foolishness. God exists, 
 because we exist. God lives in our conscience, in the 
 conscience of Humanity, in the universe which surrounds 
 us. Our conscience invokes Him in the most solemn 
 moments of grief and of joy. Humanity has been able 
 to transform, to pollute, but never to suppress His holy 
 name. The Universe manifests Him in the order, the 
 harmony, the intelligence of its motions and of its laws. 
 There are no atheists among you ; if there were, they 
 would deserve not curses, but tears. He who can deny 
 God on a starry night, or beside the graves of his dearest 
 ones, or in the presence of martyrdom, is greatly un- 
 happy or greatly wicked. The first atheist was doubtless 
 a man who had hidden a crime from all other men and 
 sought by denying God to rid himself of the only witness 
 from whom he could not hide it, and to suffocate the 
 remorse which tormented him. Perhaps he was a tyrant 
 who had stolen half the soul of his brothers from them 
 with their freedom, and who tried to substitute the wor- 
 ship of brute force for faith in duty and in Eternal Right. 
 After him there came now and again, from century to 
 century, men whom philosophical aberration led to 
 insinuate atheistic doctrines ; but they were very few, 
 and much ashamed. Then in days not long ago there
 
 22 The Duties of Man 
 
 came a multitude who, irritated by a false and stupid 
 idea of God which some caste or tyrannic power had 
 set up for its own advantage, denied God Himself; but 
 it was for an instant only, and during that instant their 
 need of a divinity was so great that they had to worship 
 the goddess Reason, the goddess Nature. To-day 
 there are men who abhor all religion because they see 
 the corruption in actual creeds, and do not divine the 
 purity of those of the future ; but not one among them 
 dares to call himself an atheist. There are priests who 
 prostitute the name of God to venal calculations, or to 
 fear of the powerful ; there are tyrants who blaspheme it 
 by invoking it as the protector of their tyranny. But 
 because the light of the sun comes to us often dimmed 
 and clouded by foul vapours, shall we deny the existence 
 of the sun and the vivifying power of its rays upon the 
 universe ? Because out of liberty wicked men some- 
 times produce anarchy, shall we curse liberty ? Faith in 
 God burns with an immortal light through all the lies 
 and corruption with which men have darkened His name. 
 Lies and corruption pass away, as tyrannies pass away : 
 God remains, and the People remains, God's image upon 
 earth. Even as the People, through slavery, suffering, 
 and poverty, conquers, step by step, conscience, strength, 
 emancipation, so out of the ruins of corrupt systems of 
 religion the holy name of God arises resplendent, 
 surrounded by a purer, a more fervent, and more rational 
 worship. 
 
 I do not therefore speak to you of God in order to 
 demonstrate His existence to you, or to tell you that you 
 ought to adore Him — you do adore Him, even without 
 naming Him, every time that you. feel your life and the 
 life of the beings around you — but to tell you how you 
 ought to adore Him, and to admonish you of an error 
 which dominates the minds of many men in the classes 
 which rule you, and, through their example, many 
 of your minds ; an error as grave and as fatal as 
 atheism. 
 
 This error is the separation, more or less evident, of 
 God from His work, from the earth upon which you have
 
 The Duties of Man 23 
 
 to fulfil one period of your existence. On the one side 
 there are people who say to you, " True, God exists ; but 
 all you can do is to admit His existence and to adore 
 Him. No one can understand and explain the relation 
 between God and men. It is a question which your 
 conscience must debate with God himself. Think what 
 you will about it, but do not propound your belief to 
 your fellows, or seek to apply it to the things of this 
 earth. Politics are one thing, religion another. Do not 
 confound them ; leave the things of heaven to the 
 established spiritual authority, whatever it maybe, reserv- 
 ing to yourselves the right of refusing it credence if it 
 seem to you to betray its mission ; let every one think 
 and believe in his own way ; you need only occupy your- 
 selves in common about earthly things. Materialists or 
 spiritualists, whichever you may be, do you believe in 
 liberty, and in the equality of man ? do you want well- 
 being for the majority ? do you want universal suffrage ? 
 Unite yourselves to obtain these desires ; it is not 
 necessary for this that you should have a common 
 understanding on questions to do with heaven." 
 
 On the other side you have men who tell you " God 
 exists, but He is too great, too superior to all created 
 things for you to hope to attain to Him by human works. 
 The earth is clay. Life is but for an hour. Withdraw 
 yourselves from the first as much as you can ; do not 
 hold the second above its worth. What indeed are all 
 earthly interests in comparison with the immortal life of 
 your souls? Think of this ; look up to heaven. What 
 does it matter in what condition you live here below ? 
 You are destined to die ; and God will judge you accord- 
 ing to the thoughts which you have given, not to earth, 
 but to Him. Do you suffer ? Bless the Lord who sends 
 you these afflictions. Terrestrial existence is a period 
 of trial ; your earth a land of exile. Despise it and 
 rise above it. In the midst of sufferings, of poverty, 
 of slavery, you can turn to God, and sanctify yourselves 
 by adoration of Him, by prayer, by scorn of worldly 
 things, and by faith in a future in which you will have 
 a great reward."
 
 24 The Duties of Man 
 
 Of those who speak to you thus, the first do not love 
 God ; the second do not know Him. 
 
 Man is one, say to the first. You cannot divide him in 
 two, and so contrive that he should agree with you in 
 the principles which ought to regulate the organisation 
 of society, while he differs from you as to his origin, 
 his destinies, and his law of life here below. Religions 
 govern the world. When the men of India believed 
 themselves to be born, some from the head, others from 
 the arms, others from the feet of Brahma, their divinity, 
 they organised society by a division of mankind into 
 castes, assigning to the first the heritage of intellectual 
 work, to the second the business of war, to the third the 
 servile labours, condemning themselves to an immobility 
 which still endures and will endure while belief in this 
 principle still exists. When the Christians declared to 
 the world that men were all sons of God and brothers in 
 Him, all the doctrines of the legislators and philosophers 
 of antiquity laying down the existence of two natures in 
 man did not avail to prevent the abolition of slavery, 
 involving a radically different organisation of society. 
 For every advance in religious belief we can show you 
 a corresponding social advance in the history of 
 Humanity: but for your doctrine of indifference in 
 the matter of religion, you can show us no other conse- 
 quence than anarchy. You have been able to destroy, 
 never to build up; deny this, if you can. By dint of 
 exaggerating a prmciple contained in Protestantism and 
 which Protestantism to-day feels the necessity of aban- 
 doning — by dint of deducing all your ideas solely from 
 the independence of the individual, you have arrived — 
 where ? In commerce at anarchy — that is to say, at the 
 oppression of the weak ; in politics at liberty — that is to say, 
 at the derision of the weak who have neither means, time, 
 nor knowledge to exercise their proper rights ; in morals 
 at egoism — that is to say, the isolation and the rum of the 
 weak who cannot help themselves alone. But we want 
 Association ; how is this to be securely obtained except 
 by brothers who believe in the same guiding principle, 
 who are united in the same faith, who take the oath in
 
 The Duties of Man 25 
 
 the same name? We want education; how is this to 
 be given or received except in virtue of a principle 
 containing the expression of our common belief con- 
 cerning the origin and the aim of man and of his Ufa on 
 this earth ? We want a common education ; how is this 
 to be given or received, without a common faith ? We 
 want to form a nation ; how can we succeed in this, 
 unless we believe in a common purpose, in a common 
 duty ? And whence can we deduce a common duty if 
 not from the idea which we form of God and of His 
 relation to us ? Doubtless universal suffrage is an 
 excellent thing ; it is the only legal means by which a 
 country may govern itself without violent crises from 
 time to time. But universal suffrage in a country 
 dominated by one faith will give expression to the 
 tendencies, to the will of the nation, while in a country 
 lacking a common belief how can it express anything 
 except the interests of those who are numerically 
 strongest and the oppression of all the rest ? All 
 political reforms in countries without religion or indif- 
 ferent to religion will last as long as it suits the caprice 
 or the self-interest of individuals, and no longer. The 
 experience of the last fifty years has taught us enough 
 on this point. 
 
 To the others who speak to you of heaven^ separating 
 it from earth, you will say that heaven and earth, like 
 the way and the end of the way, are one thing 
 only. Do not tell us that the earth is clay. The earth 
 is God's ; God created it that we might climb by it to 
 Him. The earth is not a sojourn of expiation and 
 temptation ; it is the place appointed for our labour of 
 self-improvement, and of development towards a higher 
 state of existence. God created us not for contem- 
 plation, but for action ; He created us in His own 
 image, and He is Thought and Action — nay, in Him 
 there is no thought which is not simultaneous action. 
 You say we ought to despise all worldly things, and 
 spurn terrestrial life, so that we may concern ourselves 
 only with the celestial. But what is terrestrial life if not 
 a prelude to the celestial, a step towards its attainment ?
 
 1 
 
 \ 
 
 "'T 
 
 26 The Duties of Man 
 
 Do you not perceive that blessing as you do the last 
 step of the ladder by which we must all climb, and 
 declaring the first unholy, you cut away our path from 
 us ? The life of a soul is sacred in every one of its 
 stages, in the earthly stage as well as in the others 
 which are to follow ; so, then, every stage must be a 
 preparation for the next, every temporary progress must 
 help the continuous upward progress of the immortal 
 life which God has kindled in each one of us, and in 
 collective humanity which grows by the operation of 
 each one of us. 
 
 Now, God has placed you here below upon earth ; 
 He has surrounded you with millions of beings like 
 yourselves, whose minds are nourished by your minds, 
 whose improvement progresses with yours, whose life 
 is fertilised by your life. To save you from the perils 
 of isolation He has given you needs which you cannot 
 satisfy by yourselves, and dominating social instincts which 
 distinguish you from the brutes, in whom they remain 
 dormant. He has spread about you this world which you 
 call material, magnificent in beauty, and pregnant with 
 life ; with a life which, you must never forget, reveals 
 itself everywhere as God's visible token, but nevertheless 
 awaits your work, depends in its manifestations upon 
 you, and increases in power in proportion to the increase 
 in your activity. He has placed within you inextin- 
 guishable sympathies, pity for those who mourn, joy 
 with those who smile, wrath against those who oppress 
 their fellow creatures, an incessant yearning for truth ; 
 admiration for the genius who discloses a portion of 
 truth unknown before ; enthusiasm for those who trans- 
 late it into action profitable to all ; religious veneration 
 for those who, unable to make it triumph, die a martyr's 
 death, bearing witness to it with their blood. Yet you 
 deny, you scorn these indications of your mission 
 lavished around you by God : you even cry anathema 
 upon His manifestations, bidding us concentrate all our 
 powers upon a work of inward purification which must 
 be imperfect, nay impossible, when carried on alone. 
 
 Now, does not God punish those who strive to do this?
 
 The Duties of Man 27 
 
 Is not the slave degraded ? Is not half the soul of the 
 poor day labourer suffocated in sensual appetites, in 
 the blind instincts which you call material, so long as 
 he is doomed to spend the divine life within him in 
 a series of physical acts unenlightened by education ? 
 Do you find a more lively religious faith in the Russian 
 serf than in the Pole fighting the battles of his country 
 and liberty ? Do you find a more fervent love of God 
 in the degraded subject of a Pope and of a tyrant king 
 than in the Lombard republican of the twelfth century 
 and the Florentine republican of the fourteenth ? 
 Wheresoever the spirit of God is, there is liberty, has 
 been said by one of the most powerful apostles that 
 we know ; and the religion which he preached decreed 
 the abolition of slavery ; for who can understand and 
 adore God rightly while prostrate at the feet of God's 
 creature? Yours is not a religion; it is a sect of men 
 who have forgotten their origin, forgotten the battle 
 which their fathers kept up against a rotten society, 
 and the victories which they won, transforming this 
 world which you, O men of contemplation, despise 
 to-day. Whatever earnest belief shall arise out of the 
 ruins of the old worn-out creeds will transform the 
 existing social order, because every earnest belief seeks 
 to apply itself to all the branches of human activity ; 
 because the earth has always sought in every age to 
 conform itself to the heaven in which it believed ; 
 because the whole story of Humanity repeats under 
 diverse forms and in diverse degrees, varying according 
 to the times, the saying written in the Christian prayer, 
 Thy kingdom come on earth, O Lord, as it is in heaven. 
 
 Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. I^et these 
 words, better remembered and better applied than in the 
 past, be the utterance of your faith, your prayer, O my 
 brothers. Repeat it, and act so that it may be fulfilled. 
 Do not heed those who try to teach you passive resigna- 
 tion, indifference to earthly things, submission to every 
 temporal power even when unjust, repeating to you 
 without understanding it this other saying, " Render 
 unto Caesar the things which are Caisar's, and unto God
 
 28 The Duties of Man 
 
 the things which are God's." Can they tell you any- 
 thing which is not God's? Nothing is Caesar's except 
 in so far as it is such in conformity with the divine law. 
 Csesar — that is, the temporal power, the civil government — 
 is nothing but the mandatory, the executor, so far as its 
 powers and the times allow, of God's design ; whenever 
 it betrays its mandate it is, I will not say your right, 
 but your duty to change it. Why are you here below, if 
 not to exert yourselves to work out the intention of God 
 with the means you possess and in your own sphere? 
 Why profess to believe in the unity of the human race, 
 the necessary consequence of the unity of God, if you do 
 not labour to realise it by combating the arbitrary divisions 
 and the enmities which still divide the various tribes 
 composing Humanity ? Why believe in human liberty, 
 the basis of human responsibility, if we do not strive to 
 destroy all the obstacles which impede the first and 
 vitiate the second ? Why speak of Brotherhood and yet 
 allow our brothers every day to be trampled, degraded, 
 despised ? The earth is our field of labour ; we may 
 not curse it, we must sanctify it. The material forces 
 which surround us are our instruments of labour ; we 
 may not reject them, we must use them for good. 
 
 But this without God you cannot do. I have spoken 
 to you of duties ; I have taught you that the mere 
 knowledge of your tights is not enough to guide you 
 permanently along the path of Progress, is not enough to 
 give you that progressive continuous improvement in 
 }our conditions which you seek. Now without God 
 whence can we derive Duty ? Without God, you will 
 find that whatever system of civil government you choose 
 to attach yourselves to has no other basis than blind, 
 brutal, tyrannic Force. There is no escape from this. 
 Either the development of human things depends upon a 
 law of providence which we are all charged to discover 
 and to apply, or it is entrusted to chance, to the circum- 
 stances of the moment and the man who knows best 
 how to avail himself of them. Either we ought to obey 
 God, or to serve men — whether one or many matters 
 ■not. If there be not a Supreme Mind reigning over all
 
 The Duties of Man 29 
 
 human minds, who can save us from the tyranny of our 
 fellow men, whenever they find themselves stronger than 
 we ? If there be not a holy and inviolable law, not 
 created by men, what rule have we by which to judge 
 whether an act is just or unjust ? In the name of whom, 
 in the name of what, shall we protest against oppression 
 and inequality ? Without God there is no other sove- 
 reign than Fact ; Fact before which the materialists ever 
 bow themselves, whether its name be Revolution or 
 Buonaparte ; Fact, which the materialists of to-day also, 
 in Italy and everywhere, use asa justification for inactivity 
 even when they agree in theory with our principles. Now, 
 how shall we demand of them self-sacrifice, martyrdom, 
 in the name of our individual opinions ? Shall we 
 transform theory into practice and abstract principle 
 into action, on the strength of our interests alone? 
 Do not be deceived. As long as we speak as individuals 
 in the name of whatever theory our individual intellect 
 suggests to us, we shall have what we have to-day, 
 adherence in words, not in deeds. The cry which rang 
 out in all the great revolutions — the cry of the Crusades, 
 God wills it I God wills it I — alone can rouse the 
 inert to action, give courage to the fearful, enthusiasm of 
 self-sacrifice to the calculating, faith to those who reject 
 with distrust all merely human ideas. Prove to men 
 that the work of emancipation and of progressive develop- 
 ment to which you call them is part of God's design, 
 and none will rebel. Prove to them that the work 
 which has to be accomplished here on earth is an essential 
 portion of their immortal life, and all the calculations of 
 the moment will vanish before the importance of the 
 future. Without God you can command, not persuade ; 
 you can be tyrants in your turn, never educators and 
 apostles. 
 
 God wills it — God wills it ! It is the cry of the 
 People, O Brothers ! it is the cry of your People, the 
 cry of the Italian Nation. Do not let yourselves be 
 deceived, you who work with sincerity of love for your 
 nation, by those who will perhaps tell you that the 
 Italian genius is not a political genius, and that the
 
 30 The Duties of Man 
 
 religious spirit has departed from her. The religious 
 spirit never departed from Italy as long as she remained, 
 in spite of her divisions, great and active ; but it departed 
 from her in the sixteenth century, when Florence had 
 fallen, and all the liberty of Italian life had been crushed 
 by the foreign arms of Charles V. and the deceit of the 
 Popes, and we began to lose our national character, and 
 to live as if we were Spaniards, Germans, and French. 
 Then our learned men began to play the buffoon to 
 princes, and to stimulate their listless patrons by laugh- 
 ing at everybody and everything. Then our priests, 
 seeing that any application of religious truth was im- 
 possible, began to traffic in holy things, and to think of 
 themselves, not of the people whom they ought to have 
 enlightened and protected. And then the people, 
 despised by the learned, deceived and fleeced by the 
 priests, banished from any influence in public matters, 
 began to revenge themselves by deriding the learned, 
 distrusting the priests, rebelling against all creeds, since 
 they perceived that the old one was corrupt, and were 
 not able to look beyond it. From that time forward 
 we have dragged ourselves along, in abjectness and impo- 
 tence, between the superstitions imposed upon us by habit, 
 or by our governors, and incredulity. But we want to rise 
 again, great and honoured. And we will remember the 
 national tradition. We will remember that, with the 
 name of God on their lips, and with the symbols of their 
 faith in the centre of the battle, our Lombard brothers 
 in the twelfth century vanquished the German invaders, 
 and reconquered the liberties wrested from them. We 
 will remember that the republicans of the Tuscan cities 
 held their parliaments in the churches. We will re- 
 member the Florentine artisans who refused to submit 
 their democratic liberty to the domination of the House 
 of Medici, and by solemn vote elected Christ as head of 
 the republic ; and the friar Savonarola preaching in the 
 same breath faith in God and the rights of the people, 
 and the Genoese of 1746, who, with stones for weapons, 
 and in the name of .the Virgin Mary, their patron saint, 
 liberated their city from the German army which
 
 The Duties of Man 31 
 
 occupied it ; and a whole chain of other deeds like these, 
 in which the reh'gious thought protected and fertihsed 
 the popular thought of Italy. And the religious senti- 
 ment sleeps in our people, waiting to be awakened. He 
 who knows how to rouse it will do more for the nation 
 than can be done by twenty political theories. Perhaps 
 it is the lack of this sentiment in the imitators of the 
 foreign monarchical constitutions and tactics who led 
 the past attempts at insurrection in Italy, as much as the 
 lack of an openly popular purpose, which is responsible 
 for the coldness with which the people have till now 
 regarded these attempts. Preach therefore, O Brothers, 
 in the name of God. He who has an Italian heart will 
 follow you. 
 
 Preach in the name of God. The learned will smile ;, 
 ask the learned what they have done for their country.. 
 The priests will excommunicate you ; say to the priests, 
 that you know God better than all of them together do, 
 and that between God and His law you have no need of 
 any intermediary. The people will understand you, and 
 repeat with you : IVe believe in God the Father, who is 
 Intelligence and Love, Creator and Teacher of Humanity. 
 And in this saying you and the People will conquer.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE LAW 
 
 You live : you have therefore a law of life. There is 
 no life without a law. Whatever exists, exists in a 
 certain manner, according to certain conditions, and 
 under a certain law. A law of aggregation governs 
 minerals ; a law of growth governs plants ; a law of 
 motion governs the stars ; a law governs you and your 
 life ; a law as much nobler and more lofty than these, 
 as you yourselves are higher than all other created things 
 on earth. To develop yourselves, to act, to live accord- 
 ing to your law, is your first, nay, your only Duty. 
 
 God gave you life : God therefore gave you the law. 
 God is the only Law-Giver to the human race. His 
 law is the only law which you are obliged to obey. 
 Human laws are only valid and good in so far as they 
 conform to His law, explaining and applying it : they 
 are bad whenever they contradict or disregard it ; and it 
 is then not only your right, but your duty, to disobey 
 them and abolish them. He who best explains God's 
 law and applies it to human occasions is your legitimate 
 head : love him and follow him. But you have not, 
 and cannot have, any masfer hut God, without being false 
 and rebellious to Him. 
 
 In the knowledge of your law of life, of the law of God, 
 lies, then, the foundation of Morality, the rule of your 
 actions and of your duties, the measure of your responsi- 
 bilities ; that, too, is your defence against the unjust laws 
 which the arbitrary will of one man, or of many men, 
 may strive to impose upon you. Without knowing this 
 law you cannot pretend to the name or rights of men. 
 All rights have their origin in a law, and as long as you
 
 The Duties of Man 33 
 
 are unable to invoke it you may be tyrants or slaves, 
 but nothing else ; tyrants, if you are strong, slaves of the 
 strong if you are weak. To be 7nen you must know 
 the law which distinguishes human nature from that of 
 brutes, plants, minerals, and you must conform your 
 actions to it. 
 
 Now, hoiv are you to know it ? 
 
 This is the question which Humanity in all time has 
 addressed to those who have pronounced the word 
 duty : and to-day still the answers are different. 
 
 Some have answered by showing a code or a book and 
 saying. Within this is contained the whole moral latv. 
 Others have said. Let every ?nan interrogate his own 
 heart ; there lie will find the definition of good and of evil. 
 Others, again, rejecting the judgment of the individual, 
 have invoked universal opinion and declared that where 
 Hiimanity agrees i7i a belief, that belief is the true one. 
 
 All are wrong. And the history of the human race 
 has proved by unimpeachable facts the impotence of all 
 these answers. Those who affirm that the whole moral 
 law is to be found in a book, or in the utterances of a 
 single man, forget that there is no code which Humanity, 
 after believing in it for centuries, has not abandoned in 
 order to seek and preach a better one, and that there 
 is no reason to believe, especially to-day, that Humanity. 
 will change its way of proceeding. 
 
 Those who maintain that the conscience of the indivi- 
 dual alone is the criterion of the true and the false, that 
 is, of good and evil, need only remember that no religion, 
 however holy, has ever existed without heretics, without 
 dissenters by conviction, ready to face martyrdom in 
 the name of their conscience. Protestantism to-day is 
 divided and subdivided into a thousand sects, all 
 founded on the rights of individual conscience ; all eager 
 to make war upon each other, and perpetuating that 
 anarchy of belief which is the true and only source of 
 the social and political discord now torinenting the 
 peoples of Europe. And on the other hand, the men 
 who reject the testimony of the individual conscience, and 
 appeal only to the common belief of Humanity, must
 
 34 The Duties of Man 
 
 remember that all the great ideas which have helped 
 the progress of Humanity began by being opposed to 
 the general beliefs of Humanity, and were preached by 
 individuals whom Humanity derided, persecuted, and 
 crucified. 
 
 Each of these rules, then, is insufficient to obtain for 
 us a knowledge of the law of God, of Truth. Yet, 
 nevertheless, the individual conscience is sacred ; the 
 general opinion of Humanity is sacred, and whoever 
 refuses to interrogate either the one or the other 
 deprives himself of an essential means of knowing the 
 truth. The common error till now has been the desire 
 to reach the truth by one of these means exclusively ; 
 an error most fatal and decisive in its consequences, 
 because the conscience of the individual cannot be set 
 up as the only criterion of truth without falling into 
 anarchy, nor can the general opinion of Humanity be 
 invoked at any given moment as a rule from which 
 there is no appeal, without suffocating human liberty 
 and plunging headlong into tyranny. 
 
 Thus— and I give these examples to show that upon 
 these primary foundations the whole social edifice rests, 
 more than is generally supposed — thus men, falling into 
 t^e=s»ame error, have organised political socifityr-stmi*^ 
 QUd^ on respect for the rights of the Cjjidiind.ualf 
 forgetting altogether the educational mission of society, 
 others solely upon 5^ «/ rights, sacrificing the liberty and 
 action of the individual.^ And France, after her great 
 revolution, and England conspicuously, have taught us 
 how the first system leads only to inequality and 
 oppression of the many; Communism, if ever it 
 could become established fact, would show us, among 
 other things, how the second condemns society to 
 petrifaction by depriving it of all mobility and faculty 
 of progress. 
 
 Thus some, considering only the so-called rights of 
 the individual, have organised, or rather disorganised, the 
 
 ' I am naturally speaking of countries where under a system of con- 
 stitutional monarchy a certain organisation of society has been attempted. 
 In countries governed despotically there is no society ; social rights and 
 the rights of individuals are equally sacrificed.
 
 The Duties of Man 35 
 
 economic system by founding it solely upon the theory 
 of unlimited freedom of competition ; whilst the others, 
 thinking only of social unity, would confide the monopoly 
 of all the productive forces of the State to the Govern- 
 ment ; of these two theories, the first has given us all 
 the evils of anarchy, the second would lead to immobility 
 and all the evils of tyranny. 
 
 God has given you the general opinion of your fellow- 
 men, and your own conscience, to be to you two wings 
 with which to soar towards Him. Why should you 
 insist on cutting off one of them ? Why should you 
 isolate yourselves, or let the world absorb you altogether ? 
 Why should you want to suffocate the voice of the 
 individual or of the human race ? Both are sacred ; 
 God speaks in both. Whenever they agree, whenever the 
 cry of your conscience is ratified by the general consent 
 of Humanity, there is God, there you are sure of having 
 the truth in your grasp ; the one is the verification of 
 the other. 
 
 If your duties were merely negative, if they consisted 
 solely in not doing evil, in not harming your fellow-man, 
 perhaps in the state of development which even the least 
 educated have reached to-day the voice of your 
 conscience would be enough to guide you. You are 
 born for good, and every time that you act directly 
 contrary to the Law, every time that you commit what 
 men call crime, there is something in you which accuses 
 you, some voice of reproof which you can conceal from 
 others, but not from yourselves. But your most 
 important duties are positive. It is not enough not to do ; 
 you must do. It is not enough to content yourselves with 
 not acting contrary to the law ; you must act according to 
 the law. It is not enough not to do harm ; you must do 
 good to your brothers. Hitherto morality has too often 
 presented itself to the majority of men in a form rather 
 negative than affirmative. The interpreters of the Law 
 have said, " Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal " : 
 few or none have taught them the obligations which belong 
 to them as men, and in what way they ought to do good 
 to their fellows and further God's design in creation.
 
 36 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 Now, this is the chief aim of morality, and no individual, 
 by consulting his own conscience only, may ever attain 
 it. 
 
 The conscience of the individual speaks in accordance 
 with his education, his tendencies, his habits, his passions. 
 The conscience of the savage Iroquois speaks a language 
 different from that of the civilised European of the nine- 
 teenth century. The conscience of the free man suggests 
 to him duties which the conscience of the slave does not 
 even suspect. Ask the poor Neapolitan or Lombard day- 
 labourer, whose only teacher of morality has been a bad 
 priest and to whom the only book allowed, if indeed he 
 knows how to read, is the Austrian catechism ; he will 
 tell you that his duties are to labour industriously for any 
 wage he can obtain in order to support his family, to 
 submit himself blindly to the laws whatever they may be, 
 and to do no harm to others. Should you speak to him 
 of duties which bind him to his country and to humanity ; 
 should you say to him, " You do harm to your fellow- 
 men by consenting to work for a wage less than the 
 value of your work, and you sin against God and against 
 your own soul by obeying laws which are unjust," he 
 would answer like one who does not understand, lifting 
 his brows in bewilderment. Ask the Italian working- 
 man whom better circumstances or contact with men of 
 more highly educated minds have taught a part of the 
 truth ; he will tell you that his country is enslaved, that 
 his brothers are unjustly condemned to live in material 
 and moral wretchedness, and that he feels it his duty to 
 protest as far as he is able against this injustice. Why so 
 much divergence between the promptings of conscience in 
 two individuals of the same time and the same country ? 
 Why among ten individuals holding substantially the 
 same creed, that which enjoins the development and the 
 progress of the human race, do we find ten different 
 convictions as to the manner of reducing belief to action — 
 that is to say, as to their duties ? Evidently the voice of 
 the individual conscience is not enough in all conditions 
 of things, and without any other guide, to reveal the 
 law to us. Conscience can only teach us that the law
 
 The Duties of Man 37 
 
 exists, not the nature of the duties which it imposes. 
 For this reason martyrdom has never been absent from 
 among men, however much egoism may have prevailed ; 
 but how many martyrs have sacrificed existence for 
 imaginary duties, for the sake of errors patent to every- 
 body to-day ! 
 
 Your conscience has need, then, of a guide, of a Hght 
 to penetrate the darkness around it, of a rule by which 
 to confirm and direct its instincts. And this rule is- 
 Intellect and Humanity. 
 
 God has given intellect to each of you that you may 
 educate it to know His law. To-day poverty, the rooted 
 errors of centuries, and the will of your masters withhold 
 from you even the possibility of educating it ; and for 
 this reason it is necessary for you to overthrow those 
 obstacles by force. But even when those obstacles are 
 removed your individual intellect will not be enough to 
 teach you the law of God, if it is not supported by the 
 intellect of Humanity. Your life is short, your individual 
 faculties are weak, uncertain, and need a support. Now, 
 God has placed beside you a Being whose life is con- 
 tinuous, whose faculties are the sum of all the individual 
 faculties that have been exercised for perhaps four 
 hundred centuries ; a being which amid the errors and 
 the faults of individuals ever advances in wisdom and 
 morality ; a being in whose development God has written 
 and writes in every epoch a line of His law. 
 
 This Being is Humanity. 
 
 Humanity, as a thinker of the last century has said, h 
 a man ivho is ahvays leatning. Individuals die, but that 
 much of truth which they have revealed, that much of 
 good which they have done, is not lost with them ; 
 Humanity treasures it up and the men who walk over 
 their graves reap the benefit of it. Every one of us is 
 born to-day in an atmosphere of ideas and of beliefs 
 elaborated by the whole of bygone Humanity, and each 
 of us brings, even without knowing it, a more or les& 
 important element to the life of Humanity to come. 
 The education of Humanity progresses as those pyramids 
 in the East rise, to which every passer-by adds a stone
 
 38 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 We pass, the wayfarers of a day, called to complete 
 our individual education elsewhere ; the education of 
 Humanity shows itself only by flashes in each of us, but 
 is revealed slowly and progressively, continuously, in 
 Humanity. Humanity is the living word of God. The 
 spirit of God makes it fruitful and is manifested in it 
 from age to age ever more pure, ever more active, now 
 by means of an individual, now by means of a people. 
 From labour to labour, from belief to belief, Humanity 
 goes on gradually acquiring a clearer perception of its 
 •own life, of its own mission, of God and of His law. 
 
 God incarnates Himself successively in Humanity. The 
 law of God is one, as God is one ; but we only discover 
 it article by article, line by line, as the educative ex- 
 iperience of preceding generations accumulates more and 
 more and the association of races, peoples, and individuals 
 grows in extent and closeness. No man, no people, no 
 •century can presume to have discovered the whole of it ; 
 .the moral law, the law of life of Humanity, can only be 
 ■discovered in its entirety by the whole of Humanity 
 united in association, when all the powers, all the 
 faculties which constitute human nature shall be 
 developed and in action. But meanwhile that part of 
 Humanity which is most advanced in education teaches 
 ■us by its development a part of the law which we seek, 
 in its history we read the design of God ; in its needs 
 our duties; duties which change, or rather arise, with 
 those needs, because our first duty is to co-operate in 
 lifting Humanity to that degree of improvement and of 
 education for which God and the times have prepared it. 
 
 Therefore, to know the law of God you must in- 
 terrogate not only your own conscience, but the con- 
 ■science, the general conviction, of Humanity. Morality 
 is progressive, like the education of the human race and 
 your education is. The morality of Christianity was not 
 that of Pagaji times ; the morality of our century is not 
 that of eighteen centuries ago. To-day, your masters, 
 by separatimg you from the other classes, by prohibiting 
 .all association, by imposing a double censorship upon 
 the press, endeavour to conceal from you your duties,
 
 The Duties of Man 39 
 
 together with the needs of Humanity. And nevertheless, 
 even before the time comes when the nation will teach 
 you gratuitously in schools of general education the 
 history of Humanity in the past, and its needs in the 
 present, you will be able, if you wish it, to learn the first, 
 in part at least, and to divine the second. The actual 
 needs of Humanity are expressed more or less violently, 
 more or less imperfectly, in the events which occur every 
 day in countries where the immobility of silence is not 
 an absolute law. Who prevents you, our brothers of the 
 enslaved lands, from knowing them ? What power of 
 suspicious tyranny can withhold the knowledge of 
 European events for long from the millions of men in 
 Italy, very many of whom travel in other countries? If 
 public associations are forbidden almost everywhere in 
 Italy, who can prevent secret ones, if they avoid outward 
 tokens and complicated organisations, and only consist 
 of a fraternal chain, stretching from town to town until it 
 touches one of the numberless points of the frontier ? 
 Do you not find at every point of the land and maritime 
 frontier your own friends and countrymen, men whom 
 your masters have driven out of the country because 
 they wanted to help you, men who will be apostles of 
 truth to you, and tell you out of their love for you that 
 which their studies and the sad opportunities of exile 
 have taught them concerning the tradition of Humanity 
 and its aspirations in the present day ? Who can prevent 
 you from receiving any of the writings which your 
 brothers print there in exile for you, if only you wish it 
 yourselves ? Read them and burn them, so that next 
 day the inquisitors, sent by your masters, may not find 
 them in your hands, and make them a cause of accusa- 
 tion against your family. Aid us with your offerings to 
 enlarge the sphere of our mission, and to compile and 
 print for you manuals of general history, and of the 
 history of your country. Help us, by multiplying ways of 
 communication, to circulate them more widely. Be 
 assured that without instruction you cannot know your 
 duties, and that when society does not allow you to be 
 taught, the responsibility for every offence rests not with
 
 40 The Duties of Man 
 
 you, but with it ; your responsibility begins on the day 
 when an opportunity of instruction is offered to you and 
 you neglect it ; on the day when means are presented 
 to you of transforming a society which condemns you 
 to ignorance, and you do not exert yourselves to use 
 them. You are not guilty because you are ignorant ; you 
 are guilty because you resign yourselves to be ignorant, 
 because, though your conscience warns you that God 
 has not given you faculties without imposing upon you 
 the duty of developing them, you allow the faculty of 
 thinking to sleep in your soul, because though you know 
 also that God would not have given you a love of truth 
 without giving you the means of following it, you give up 
 the search for it in despair and accept unquestioningly 
 as truth the assertions of the powers that be, and of the 
 priest who has sold himself to those powers. 
 
 God the Father and Teacher of Humanity reveals 
 His law to Humanity in space and in time. Interrogate 
 the traditions of Humanity — which is the Council of 
 your fellow-men — not in the confined circle of one 
 century or of one school of thinkers, but in all the 
 centuries and in the majority of men past and present. 
 IVhejiever the voice of your conscietice correspojids with 
 that general voice of Humanity you are certain of the 
 truths certain of knowing one line of God's law. 
 
 We believe in Hutnanity, the sole ifiterpreter of God's law 
 upon earth; and from the general voice of Humanity 
 in agreement with our conscience we deduce what I 
 am now going to tell you concerning your duties.
 
 IV 
 
 DUTIES TO HUMANITY 
 
 Your first duties, first not in point of time but of 
 importance — because witiiout understanding these you 
 can only imperfectly fulfil the rest — are to Humanity. 
 You have duties as citizens, as sons, as husbands, aS' 
 fathers — sacred, inviolable duties of which I shall presently 
 speak at length ; but what makes these duties sacred 
 and inviolable is the mission, the duty, which your 
 nature as men imposes on you. You are fathers m 
 order that you may educate uien to worship and to unfold 
 God's law. You are citizens, you have a country, in 
 order that in a limited sphere, with the concourse of people 
 linked to you already by speech, by tendencies, and by 
 habits, you may labour for the benefit of all men whatever 
 they are and may be in the future — a task which each 
 one could ill do by himself, weak and lost amid the 
 immense multitude of his fellow-men. Those who 
 teach morality, limiting its obligations to duties towards 
 family or country, teach you a more or less narrow 
 egoism and lead you to what is evil for others and 
 for yourselves. Country and family are like two circles 
 drawn within a greater circle which contains them both ; 
 like two steps of a ladder without which you could 
 not cHmb any higher, but upon which it is forbidden 
 you to stay your feet. 
 
 You are men ; that is, rational and social creatures 
 capable, by means of association only, of a progress to 
 which no one may assign limits ; and this is all that 
 we know to-day of the law of life given to Humanity. 
 These characteristics constitute human nature, which 
 distinguishes you from the other beings around you and 
 
 41
 
 42 The Duties of Man 
 
 which is entrusted to each of you as a seed to bring 
 to fruit. All your life should tend to the exercise and 
 the regular development of these fundamental faculties 
 of your nature. ^Vhenever you suppress one of these 
 faculties or allow it to be suppressed wholly or in 
 part, you fall from the rank of men to the level of 
 the inferior animals and violate the law of your life, 
 the Law of God. 
 
 You fall to the level of the brutes and violate God's 
 Law whenever you suppress, or allow to be suppressed, 
 one of the faculties which constitute human nature in 
 yourself or in others. What God wills is not only that 
 his Law should be fulfilled in you as individuals — had 
 He willed this only, He would have created you solitary 
 ^but that it should be fulfilled in the whole earth, 
 among all the beings whom He created in His own image. 
 What He wills is that the Idea of perfectibility and 
 of love which He has given to the world should reveal 
 itself in ever-increasing glory, ever more adored and 
 better manifested. Your earthly and individual existence 
 within its narrow limits of time and of capacity can 
 only manifest it most imperfectly and by flashes. Human- 
 ity alone, continuous through the generations and through 
 the general intellect fed by the individual intellect of 
 each of its members, can gradually unfold that divine 
 idea and apply or glorify it. Life, then, was given you 
 by God that you might use it for the benefit of 
 humanity, that you might direct your individual faculties 
 to the development of the faculties of your fellow-men, 
 and that you might contribute by your work some portion 
 to that collective work of improvement and that dis- 
 covery of the truth which the generations slowly but 
 continuously carry on. You must educate yourselves 
 and educate others ; perfect yourselves and perfect others. 
 God is in you, without doubt; but God is likewise 
 in all the men who people this earth ; God is in the 
 life of all the generations which were, which are, and 
 which are to be ; and which have progressively improved, 
 and will continue to improve, the conception formed 
 by Humanity of Him, of His Law, and of our Duties.
 
 The Duties of Man 43 
 
 You must adore Him and glorify Him wheresoever He 
 is. The universe is His temple. And every unresisted 
 and unexpiated profanation of God's temple is visited 
 upon all the believers. It is of little avail that you can 
 call yourselves pure ; even could you by isolating your- 
 selves keep your purity, you are still false to your duty 
 if you have corruption two steps off and do not strive 
 against it. It is of little avail that you worship the truth in 
 your hearts ; if error rules your brothers in some other 
 corner of this earth, which is our common mother, and you 
 do not desire, and endeavour as far as lies in your power, 
 to overthrow it, you are false to your duty. The image 
 of God is defaced in the immortal souls of your fellow- 
 men. God wills that we should adore Him in His Law, 
 and His Law is misinterpreted, violated, denied all 
 around you. Human nature is false to itself in millions 
 of men to whom, as to you, God has entrusted the 
 concordant fulfilment of His design. And you, while 
 you remain inactive, do you dare to call yourselves 
 believers ? 
 
 A people, Greek, Polish, Circassian, raises the banner 
 of the Fatherland and of Independence, fights, conquers, 
 or dies for it. What is it that makes your hearts beat 
 at the story of its battles, which makes them swell with 
 joy at its victories, and sorrow over its defeats ? A man, 
 perhaps your fellow-countryman, perhaps a foreigner, 
 rises amid the universal silence, in some corner of the 
 earth, gives utterance to certain ideas which he believes 
 to be true, maintains them in persecution and in chains, 
 and dies, still constant to them, upon the scaffold. Why 
 do you honour him with the name of Saint and of 
 Martyr ? Why do you respect and teach your children 
 to respect his memory ? 
 
 And why do you eagerly read the miracles of patriotic 
 love recorded in Greek story, and repeat them to your 
 children with a feeling of pride, almost as if they were 
 stories of your own fathers ? These deeds of the Greeks 
 are two thousand years old, and belong to an epoch of 
 civilisation which is not and never can be yours. That 
 man whom you call martyr died perhaps for ideas which
 
 44 The Duties of Man 
 
 you do not hold, and anyhow by his voluntary death 
 he cut short his individual progress here below. That 
 people whom you admire in victory and in defeat is 
 a people foreign and perhaps almost unknown to you ; 
 speaking a different language, and with a manner of life 
 which has no visible influence upon yours ; what matters 
 it to you whether it is dominated by the Sultan or the 
 King of Bavaria, by the Russian Czar or by a govern- 
 ment springing from the common will of the nation ? 
 But in your heart a voice cries, "Those men of two 
 thousand years ago, those far-off peoples that fight 
 to-day, that martyr to ideas for which you would not 
 die, were and are your brothers : brothers not only by 
 community of origin and nature, but community of work 
 and of purpose. Those ancient Greeks passed away ; 
 but their work did not pass away, and without it you 
 would not possess to-day that degree of intellectual and 
 moral development which you have reached. Those 
 peoples consecrate with their blood an idea of national 
 liberty for which you too are fighting. That martyr 
 proclaimed by his death that man must sacrifice all 
 things, and if needs be life also, for that which he 
 believes to be the Truth. It is .of little importance 
 that he and all who seal their faith with their blood 
 cut short their own individual development here upon 
 earth : God provides elsewhere for them. But the 
 development of Humanity is of importance. It is of 
 importance that the coming generation, taught by your 
 combats and your sacrifices, should rise higher and grow 
 mightier than you in the understanding of the Law^ 
 in the adoration of the Truth. It is of importance that 
 human nature, fortified by example, should become 
 better, and realise more and more God's will upon 
 earth. And wherever human nature grows better, 
 wherever a new truth is won, wherever a step forward 
 is taken on the path of education, of progress, and of 
 morality, it is a step, a gain, which will bear fruit sooner 
 or later for the whole of Humanity. You are all soldiers 
 of an army which moves by diverse ways, divided into 
 different bands, to the conquest of a single enterprise.
 
 The Duties of Man 45 
 
 At present you only look to your immediate leaders ; 
 different uniforms, different words of command, the 
 distances which separate the operating corps, the 
 mountains which conceal them from one another, make 
 you often forget this truth, and fix your attention ex- 
 clusively upon the end which is closest to you. But 
 there is One above you all who sees the whole and directs 
 all the movements. God alone has the secret of the 
 battle, and will be able to gather you all together into 
 one camp and under one banner. 
 
 How great the distance between this belief which stirs 
 in our souls and which will be the basis of the morality of 
 the epoch now about to open, and the faith which formed 
 the basis of morality for the generation which we to-day 
 call ancient ! And how close is the bond between the 
 idea which we form of the Divine Government and that 
 which we form of our duties ! The first men felt God, 
 but without comprehending Him, without even seeking to 
 comprehend Him in His Law; they felt Him in His might, 
 not in His love ; they had a confused conception of some 
 sort of relation between Him and the individual, but 
 nothing more. Little able to detach themselves from 
 the sphere of objects perceptible to the senses, they 
 embodied Him in one of these — in the tree which they had 
 seen struck by the thunderbolt, in the rock beside which 
 they had raised their tent, in the animal which first 
 presented itself to their eyes. This was the worship 
 which is called in the history of religion fetichism. And 
 at that time men knew of no bond except the family, 
 the reproduction in a certain sense of their own indivi- 
 duality ; beyond the circle of the family there were none 
 but strangers, or more usually, enemies ; to preserve 
 themselves and their family was the sole foundation of 
 morality. In later days the idea of God was expanded. 
 From objects of sense man rose timidly to the conception 
 of abstractions ; he generalised. God was no longer 
 the protector of the family only, but of the association 
 of many families, of cities, of peoples. To fetichism suc- 
 ceeded polytheism, the worship of many gods. Then 
 morality also enlarged its sphere of action. Men recog-
 
 46 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 nised the existence of more extended duties than those 
 of the family, and laboured for the increase of the race, 
 of the nation. Yet nevertheless Humanity was ignored. 
 Every nation called foreigners barbarians, treated them 
 as such, and sought by force or by fraud to conquer or to 
 oppress them. Every nation had foreigners or barbarians 
 in its midst, men, millions of men, not admitted to the 
 religious rites of the citizens, and looked upon as of 
 different nature, slaves among the free. The unity of the 
 human race could only be admitted as the consequence 
 of the unity of God. And the unity of God, divined by 
 a few rare thinkers of antiquity, and loudly proclaimed 
 by Moses (but with the fatal restriction that a single 
 people were God's elect) was not recognised until 
 towards the dissolution of the Roman Empire, through 
 the work of Christianity. Foremost in his teaching Christ 
 places these two inseparable truths : there is one God 
 only ; all men are the sons of God ; and the promulgation 
 of these two truths changed the aspect of the world and 
 enlarged the moral circle to the confines of the inhabited 
 earth. To the duties of man to his family and to his 
 Country they added duties to Humanity. Then man 
 learnt that wherever he found a fellow man, there was a 
 brother for him, a brother endowed with a soul immortal 
 as his own, called to ascend to its Creator, a brother to 
 whom he owed love, participation in his faith and the 
 help of counsel and of deed when needed. Then upon 
 the lips of the Apostles were heard sublime words, pro- 
 phetic of other truths contained in germ in Christianity, 
 words unintelligible to antiquity, and ill understood or 
 disregarded by the successors of the Apostles. For as 
 we have many members ifi one body, and all meinbers have 
 not the same office ; so we, being many, are one body in 
 Christ, and every 07ie members one of another?- And 
 there shall be one fold and one shepherd.'^ And now, after 
 eighteen centuries of study and experience and toil, the 
 time has come for the development of these germs, for 
 the application of these truths not only to every individual, 
 
 ' Paul, Ep. to Romans, ch. xii. vv. 4, 5. 
 " Gospe) of St. John, ch. x. ver. 16.
 
 The Duties of Man 47 
 
 but to that whole sum of human faculties and powers, 
 past and present, which is called Humanity ; for the 
 promulgation of the truth not only that Humanity is a 
 single body and ought to be governed by a single Law, 
 but that the first article of this Law is Progress, progress 
 hereupon earth, where we have to accomplish God's design 
 as much as in us lies, and to educate ourselves for better 
 destinies. The time has come to teach men that, as 
 Humanity is a single body, we are all of us, as members 
 of that body, bound to work for its development, and to 
 make its life more harmonious, active, and strong. The 
 time is come to convince ourselves that we can only rise 
 to God through the souls of our fellow-men, and that we 
 ought to improve and purify them even when they do 
 not ask it of us themselves. The time has come, since 
 that portion of God's design which He wills should be 
 fulfilled here below can only be fulfilled by entire 
 Humanity, to substitute for the exercise of charity to- 
 wards individuals a work of association, aiming at the 
 improvement of the whole, and to organise for this pur- 
 pose the Family and the Comitry. 
 
 Other and vaster duties will reveal themselves to us in 
 the future, as we gradually acquire a clearer and less 
 imperfect idea of our law cf life. Thus God the Father, 
 by means of a slow but continuous religious education, 
 guides Humanity to better things, and in this improvement 
 each individual improves also. 
 
 We improve with the improvement of Humanity ; nor 
 without the improvement of the whole can you hope that 
 your own moral and material conditions will improve. 
 Generally speaking, you cannot, even if you would, 
 separate your life from that of Humanity ; you live in it, 
 by it, for it. Your souls, with the exception of the very 
 few men of exceptional power, cannot free themselves 
 from the influence of the elements amid which they 
 exist, just as the body, however robust its constitution, 
 cannot escape from the effects of corrupt air around it. 
 How many of you have the strength of mind to bring up 
 your sons to be wholly truthful, knowing that you are 
 sending them forth to persecution in a country where
 
 48 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 tyrants and spies bid them conceal or deny two-thirds 
 of their real opinions ? How many of you resolve to 
 educate them to despise wealth in a society where gold is 
 the only power which obtains honours, influence, and 
 respect, where indeed it is the only protection from the 
 tyranny and insults of the powerful and their agents ? Who 
 is there among you who in pure love and with the best 
 intentions in the world has not murmured to his dear 
 ones in Italy, Do not trust meji ; the honest man should 
 retire into himself imd fly from public life; charity begins 
 at home, — and such-like maxims, plainly immoral, but 
 prompted by the general state of society ? What mother 
 is there among you who, although she belongs to a faith 
 which adores the cross of Christ, the voluntary martyr for 
 humanity, has not flung her arms around her son's neck 
 and striven to dissuade him from perilous attempts to 
 benefit his brothers ? And even if you had strength to 
 teach the contrary, would not the whole of society, with 
 its thousand voices, its thousand evil examples, destroy 
 the eff"ect of your words ? Can you purify, elevate your 
 own souls in an atmosphere of contamination and 
 degradation ? 
 
 And, to descend to your material conditions, do you 
 think they can be lastingly ameHorated by anything but 
 the amelioration of all ? Millions of pounds are spent 
 annually here in England, where I write, by private 
 charity, for the relief of individuals who have fallen into 
 want ; yet want increases here every year, and charity to 
 individuals has proved powerless to heal the evil, and the 
 necessity of collective organic remedies is more and more 
 universally felt. When a country, in consequence of the 
 unjust laws which govern it, is continually threatened 
 with a violent struggle between oppressors and oppressed, 
 do you suppose that there can be a flow of capital in it 
 copious enough for vast, lengthy, and cosdy enterprises ? 
 Where taxes and restrictions can be imposed at the 
 caprice of a despotic Government, the cost of whose 
 armies, spies, agents, and pensioners grows with the 
 increasing necessity of securing itself against overthrow, 
 do you suppose that industries and manufactures can
 
 The Duties of Man 49 
 
 have any activity or continuous development ? Do 
 you answer that it is enough for you to organise better 
 the government and the social conditions of your own 
 country ? It is not enough. No people lives to-day 
 exclusively on its own produce ; you live by exchange, 
 by importation and exportation. An impoverished 
 foreign nation, in which the number of consumers 
 diminishes, is one market the less for you. A foreign 
 commerce upon which a bad administration brings 
 crises or ruin, produces crises and ruin in yours. The 
 failures of England and of America bring about Italian 
 failures. Credit nowadays is not a national but a 
 European institution. Moreover, in any attempt at 
 national reform you will have all the Governments 
 hostile to you, in consequence of the alliances contracted 
 between princes, who are the first to recognise that 
 the social question is a general one in the present day. 
 There is no hope for you except in universal reform 
 and in the brotherhood of all the peoples of Europe, 
 and through Europe of all humanity. I charge you 
 then, O my brothers, by your duty and by your 
 own interest, not to forget that your first duties — duties 
 without fulfilling which you cannot hope to fulfil those 
 owed to family and country — are to Humanity. Let your 
 words and your actions be for all, since God is for all, 
 in His Love and in His Law. In whatever land you 
 may be, wherever a man is fighting for right, for justice, 
 for truth, there is your brother; wherever a man 
 suffers through the oppression of error, of injustice, of 
 tyranny, there is your brother. Free men and slaves, 
 YOU ARE ALL BROTHERS. Origin, law, and goal are one 
 for all of you. Let your creed, your action, the banner 
 beneath which you fight, be likewise one. Do not say. 
 The language which we speak is different ; tears, actions, 
 martyrdom form a common language for all men, and 
 one which you all understand. Do not say, Humajiity is 
 too vast, and we are too weak. God does not measure 
 powers, but intentions. Love Humanity. Ask your- 
 selves whenever you do an action in the sphere of your 
 Country, or your family. If tvhat I ai7i doing were done
 
 50 The Duties of Man 
 
 by all and for all, would it advafitage or injure 
 Humanity ? and if your conscience answers, // would 
 injure Humanity, desist ; desist, even if it seem to you 
 that an immediate advantage for your Country or your 
 family would ensue from your action. Be apostles of 
 this faith, apostles of the brotherhood of nations, and 
 of the unity of the human race — a principle admitted 
 to-day in theory, but denied in practice. Be such 
 apostles wherever and in whatever way you are able. 
 Neither God nor man can demand more of you. But 
 I say to you that by becoming such apostles — even to 
 yourselves only, when you are not able to do more — 
 you will advantage Humanity. God measures the 
 degrees of education which he allows the human race 
 to ascend by the number and the purity of the believers. 
 When you are pure and numerous, God, who numbers 
 you, will open for you the way to action.
 
 DUTIES TO COUNTRY 
 
 Your first Duties — first, at least, in importance — are, as 
 I have told you, to Humanity. You are men before you 
 are citizens or fathers. If you do not embrace the whole 
 human family in your love, if you do not confess your 
 faith in its unity — consequent on the unity of God — and 
 in the brotherhood of the Peoples who are appointed to 
 reduce that unity to fact — if wherever one of your fellow- 
 men groans, wherever the dignity of human nature is 
 violated by falsehood or tyranny, you are not prompt, 
 being able, to succour that wretched one, or do not feel 
 yourself called, being able, to fight for the purpose of 
 relieving the deceived or oppressed — you disobey your 
 law of life, or do not comprehend the religion which will 
 bless the future. 
 
 But what can each of you, with his isolated powers, 
 do for the moral improvement, for the progress of 
 Humanity ? You can, from time to time, give sterile 
 expression to your belief; you may, on some rare 
 occasion, perform an act of charity to a brother not 
 belonging to your own land, no more. Now, charity 
 is not the watchword of the future faith. The watch- 
 word of the future faith is association, fraternal co- 
 operation towards a common aim, and this is as much 
 superior to charity as the work of many uniting to raise 
 with one accord a building for the habitation of all 
 together would be superior to that which you would 
 accomplish by raising a separate hut each for himself, 
 and only helping one another by exchanging stones and 
 bricks and mortar. But divided as you are in language, 
 tendencies, habits, and capacities, you cannot attempt 
 
 51
 
 52 The Duties of Man 
 
 this common work. The ifidividual is too weak, and 
 Humanity too vast. My God, prays the Breton mariner 
 as he puts out to sea, protect me, my ship is so little, and 
 Thy ocean so great ! And this prayer sums up the condi- 
 tion of each of you, if no means is found of multiplying 
 your forces and your powers of action indefinitely. But 
 God gave you this means when he gave you a Country, 
 when, like a wise overseer of labour, who distributes the 
 different parts of the work according to the capacity of 
 the workmen, he divided Humanity into distinct groups 
 upon the face of our globe, and thus planted the seeds 
 of nations. Bad governments have disfigured the design 
 of God, which you may see clearly marked out, as far, at 
 least, as regards Europe, by the courses of the great 
 rivers, by the lines of the lofty mountains, and by other 
 geographical conditions ; they have disfigured it by 
 conquest, by greed, by jealousy of the just sovereignty 
 of others ; disfigured it so much that to-day there is 
 perhaps no nation except England and France whose 
 confines correspond to this design. They did not, and 
 they do not, recognise any country except their own 
 families and dynasties, the egoism of caste. But the 
 divine design will infallibly be fulfilled. Natural 
 divisions, the innate spontaneous tendencies of the 
 peoples will replace the arbitrary divisions sanctioned 
 by bad governments. The map of Europe will be re- 
 made. The Countries of the People will rise, defined 
 by the voice of the free, upon the ruins of the Countries 
 of Kings and privileged castes. Between these Countries 
 there will be harmony and brotherhood. And then the 
 work of Humanity for the general amelioration, for the 
 discovery and application of the real law of life, carried 
 on in association and distributed according to local 
 capacities, will be accomplished by peaceful and pro- 
 gressive development ; then each of you, strong in the 
 affections and in the aid of many millions of men 
 speaking the same language, endowed with the same 
 tendencies, and educated by the same historic tradition, 
 may hope by your personal effort to benefit the whole 
 of Humanity.
 
 The Duties of Man 53 
 
 To you, who have been born in Italy, God has allotted, 
 as if favouring you specially, the best-defined country in 
 Europe. In other lands, marked by more uncertain or 
 more interrupted limits, questions may arise which the 
 pacific vote of all will one day solve, but which have 
 cost, and will yet perhaps cost, tears and blood ; in 
 yours, no. God has stretched round you sublime 
 and indisputable boundaries ; on one side the highest 
 mountains of Europe, the Alps ; on the other the sea, 
 the immeasurable sea. Take a map of Europe and place 
 one point of a pair of compasses in the north of Italy on 
 Parma ; point the other to the mouth of the Var, and 
 describe a semicircle with it in the direction of the Alps ; 
 this point, which will fall, when the semicircle is com- 
 pleted, upon the mouth of the Isonzo, will have marked 
 the frontier which God has given you. As far as this 
 frontier your language is spoken and understood ; beyond 
 this you have no rights. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and 
 the smaller islands between them and the mainland of 
 Italy belong undeniably to you. Brute force may for a 
 little while contest these frontiers with you, but they 
 have been recognised from of old by the tacit general 
 consent of the peoples ; and the day when, rising with one 
 accord for the final trial, you plant your tricoloured flag 
 upon that frontier, the whole of Europe will acclaim 
 re-risen Italy, and receive her into the community of the 
 nations. To this final trial all your efforts must be 
 directed. 
 
 Without Country you have neither name, token, voice, 
 nor rights, no admission as brothers into the fellowship 
 of the Peoples. You are the bastards of Humanity. 
 Soldiers without a banner, Israelites among the nations, 
 you will find neither faith nor protection ; none will be 
 sureties for you. Do not beguile yourselves with the 
 hope of emancipation from unjust social conditions if 
 you do not first conquer a Country for yourselves ; 
 where there is no Country there is no common agree- 
 ment to which you can appeal ; the egoism of self-interest 
 rules alone, and he who has the upper hand keeps it, 
 since there is no common safeguard for the interests of
 
 Q 
 
 54 The Duties of Man 
 
 all. Do not be led away by the idea of improving your 
 material conditions without first solving the national 
 question. You cannot do it. Your industrial associa- 
 tions and mutual help societies are useful as a means of 
 educating and disciplining yourselves ; as an economic 
 fact they will remain barren until you have an Italy. 
 The economic problem demands, first and foremost, an 
 increase of capital and production ; and while your 
 Country is dismembered into separate fragments — while 
 shut off by the barrier of customs and artificial diiifi- 
 culties of every sort, you have only restricted markets 
 open to you — you cannot hope for this increase. To-day 
 — do not delude yourselves — you are not the working- 
 class of Italy ; you are only fractions of that class ; 
 powerless, unequal to the great task which you propose 
 to yourselves. Your emancipation can have no practical 
 beginning until a National Government, understanding 
 the signs of the times, shall, seated in Rome, formulate 
 a Declaration of Principles to be the guide for Italian 
 progress, and shall insert into it these words, Labour is 
 sacred, a?id is the source of the ivealth of Italy. 
 
 Do not be led astray, then, by hopes of material 
 progress which in your present conditions can only be 
 illusions. Your Country alone, the vast and rich Italian 
 Country, which stretches from the Alps to the farthest 
 limit of Sicily, can fulfil these hopes. You cannot 
 obtain your rights except by obeying the commands of 
 Duty. Be worthy of them, and you will have them. 
 O my Brothers ! love your Country. Our Country is 
 our home, the home which God has given us, placing 
 therein a numerous family which we love and are loved 
 by, and with which we have a more intimate and quicker 
 communion of feeling and thought than with others ; a 
 family which by its concentration upon a given spot, and 
 by the homogeneous nature of its elements, is destined 
 for a special kind of activity. Our Country is our field 
 of labour ; the products of our activity must go forth 
 from it for the benefit of the whole earth ; but the 
 instruments of labour which we can use best ana most 
 effectively exist in it, and we may not reject them
 
 The Duties of Man 55 
 
 without being unfaithful to God's purpose and dimin- 
 ishing our own strength. In labouring according to true 
 principles for our Country we are labouring for Humanity; 
 our Country is the fulcrum of the lever which we have 
 to wield for the common good. If we give up this 
 fulcrum we run the risk of becoming useless to our 
 Country and to Humanity. Before associating ourselves 
 with the Nations which compose Humanity we must 
 exist as a Nation. There can be no association except 
 among equals ; and you have no recognised collective 
 existence. 
 
 Humanity is a great army moving to the conquest of 
 unknown lands, against powerful and wary enemies. 
 The Peoples are the different corps and divisions of that 
 army. Each has a post entrusted to it ; each a special 
 operation to perform ; and the common victory depends 
 on the exactness with which the different operations are 
 carried out. Do not disturb the order of the battle. 
 Do not abandon the banner which God has given you. 
 Wherever you may be, into the midst of whatever people 
 circumstances may have driven you, fight for the liberty 
 of that people if the moment calls for it ; but fight as 
 Italians, so that the blood which you shed may win 
 honour and love, not for you only, but for your Country. 
 And may the constant thought of your soul be for Italy, 
 may all the acts of your life be worthy of her, and may 
 the standard beneath which you range yourselves to 
 work for Humanity be Italy's. Do not say /; say we. 
 Be every one of you an incarnation of your Country, 
 and feel himself and make himself responsible for his 
 fellow-countrymen ; let each one of you learn to act 
 in such a way that in him men shall respect and love his 
 Country. 
 
 Your Country is one and indivisible. As the members 
 of a family cannot rejoice at the common table if one of 
 their number is far away, snatched from the affection of 
 his brothers, so you should have no joy or repose as long 
 as a portion of the territory upon which your language is 
 spoken is separated from the Nation. 
 
 Your Country is the token of the mission which God
 
 56 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 has given you to fulfil in Humanity. The faculties, the 
 strength of all its sons should be united for the accom- 
 plishment of this mission. A certain number of common 
 duties and rights belong to every man who answers 
 to the Who are you ? of the other peoples, / am 
 an Italian. Those duties and those rights cannot be 
 represented except by one single authority resulting from 
 your votes. A Country must have, then, a single 
 government. The politicians who call themselves 
 federalists, and who would make Italy into a brotherhood 
 of different states, would dismember the Country, not 
 understanding the idea of Unity. The States into 
 which Italy is divided to-day are not the creation of 
 our own people ; they are the result of the ambitions 
 and calculations of princes or of foreign conquerors, 
 and serve no purpose but to flatter the vanity of local 
 aristocracies for which a narrower sphere than a great 
 Country is necessary. What you, the people, have 
 created, beautified, and consecrated with your affections, 
 with your joys, with your sorrows, and with your blood, 
 is the City and the Commune, not the Province or the 
 State. In the City, in the Commune, where your fathers 
 sleep and where your children will live, where you 
 exercise your faculties and your personal rights, you live 
 out your lives as individuals. It is of your City that 
 each of you can say what the Venetians say of theirs : 
 Venezia la xe nostra : ravemo fatta nu.^ In your City 
 you have need of liberty as in your Country you have 
 need of association. The Liberty of the Commune and 
 the Unity of the Country— let that, then, be your faith. 
 Do not say Rome and Tuscany, Rome and Lombardy, 
 Rome and Sicily ; say Rome and Florence, Rome and 
 Siena, Rome and Leghorn, and so through all the Com- 
 munes of Italy. Rome for all that represents Italian life ; 
 your Commune for whatever represents the individual 
 life. All the other divisions are artificial, and are not 
 confirmed by your national tradition. 
 
 A Country is a fellowship of free and equal men bound 
 together in a brotherly concord of labour towards a single 
 
 ^ Venice is our own : we have made her.
 
 The Duties of Man 57 
 
 end. You must make it and maintain it such. A 
 Country is not an aggregation, it is an association. There 
 is no true Country without a uniform right. There is 
 no true Country where the uniformity of that right 
 is violated by the existence of caste, privilege, and 
 inequality — where the powers and faculties of a large 
 number of individuals are suppressed or dormant — where 
 there is no common principle accepted, recognised, and 
 developed by all. In such a state of things there can be 
 no Nation, no People, but only a multitude, a fortuitous 
 agglomeration of men whom circumstances have brought 
 together and different circumstances will separate. In 
 the name of your love for your Country you must 
 combat without truce the existence of every privilege, 
 every inequality, upon the soil which has given you birth. 
 One privilege only is lawful — the privilege of Genius 
 when Genius reveals itself in brotherhood with Virtue ; 
 but it is a privilege conceded by God and not by men, 
 and when you acknowledge it and follow its inspirations, 
 you acknowledge it freely by the exercise of your own 
 reason and your own choice. Whatever privilege claims 
 your submission in virtue of force or heredity, or any 
 right which is not a common right, is a usurpation and 
 a tyranny, and you ought to combat it and annihilate 
 it. Your Country should be your Temple. God at the 
 summit, a People of equals at the base. Do not accept 
 any other formula, any other moral law, if you do not 
 want to dishonour your Country and yourselves. Let the 
 secondary laws for the gradual regulation of your 
 existence be the progressive application of this supreme 
 law. 
 
 And in order that they should be so, it is necessary 
 that ail should contribute to the making of them. The 
 laws made by one fraction of the citizens only can never 
 by the nature of things and men do otherwise than reflect 
 the thoughts and aspirations and desires of that fraction ; 
 they represent, not the whole country, but a third, a 
 fourth part, a class, a zone of the country. The law 
 must express the general aspiration, promote the good of 
 all, respond to a beat of the nation's heart. The whole
 
 58 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 nation therefore should be, directly or indirectly, the 
 legislator. By yielding this mission to a few men, you 
 put the egoism of one class in the place of the Country, 
 which is the union of all the classes. 
 
 A Country is not a mere territory ; the particular 
 territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea 
 which rises upon that foundation ; it is the sentiment of 
 love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all 
 the sons of that territory. So long as a single one of 
 your brothers is not represented by his own vote in the 
 development of the national life — so long as a single one 
 vegetates uneducated among the educated — so long as a 
 single one able and willing to work languishes in poverty 
 for want of work — you have not got a Country such as it 
 ought to be, the Country of all and for all. Votes, edjica- 
 tio>i, work are the three main pillars of the nation ; do 
 not rest until your hands have solidly erected them. 
 
 And when they have been erected — when you have 
 secured for every one of you food for both body and 
 soul — when freely united, entwining your right hands like 
 brothers round a beloved mother, you advance in beauti- 
 ful and holy concord towards the development of your 
 faculties and the fulfilment of the Italian mission — 
 remember that that mission is the moral unity of 
 Europe; remember the immense duties which it im- 
 poses upon you. Italy is the only land that has twice 
 uttered the great word of unification to the disjoined 
 nations. Twice Rome has been the metropolis, the 
 temple, of the European world ; the first time when our 
 conquering eagles traversed the known world from end 
 to end and prepared it for union by introducing civilised 
 institutions ; the second time when, after the Northern 
 conquerors had themselves been subdued by the potency 
 of Nature, of great memories and of religious inspiration, 
 the genius of Italy incarnated itself in the Papacy and 
 undertook the solemn mission — abandoned four cen- 
 turies ago — of preaching the union of souls to the 
 peoples of the Christian world. To-day a third mission 
 is dawning for our Italy ; as much vaster than those of 
 old as the Italian People, the free and united Country
 
 The Duties of Man 59 
 
 which you are going to found, will be greater and more 
 powerful than Caesars or Popes. The presentiment of 
 this mission agitates Europe and keeps the eye and the 
 thought of the nations chained to Italy. 
 
 Your duties to your Country are proportioned to the 
 loftiness of this mission. You have to keep it pure from 
 egoism, uncontaminated by falsehood and by the arts 
 of that political Jesuitism which they call diplomacy. 
 
 The government of the country will be based through 
 your labours upon the worship of principles, not upon 
 the idolatrous worship of interests and of opportunity. 
 There are countries in Europe where Liberty is sacred 
 within, but is systematically violated without ; peoples 
 who say, Truth is one tiling, utility another : theory is one 
 thing, practice another. Those countries will have in- 
 evitably to expiate their guilt in long isolation, oppression, 
 and anarchy. But you know the mission of our 
 Country, and will pursue another path. Through you 
 Italy will have, with one only God in the heavens, one 
 only truth, one only faith, one only rule of political 
 life upon earth. Upon the edifice, sublimer than 
 Capitol or Vatican, which the people of Italy will raise, 
 you will plant the banner of Liberty and of Association, 
 so that it shines in the sight of all the nations, nor will 
 you lower it ever for terror of despots or lust for the 
 gains of a day. You will have boldness as you have 
 faith. You will speak out aloud to the world, and to 
 those who call themselves the lords of the world, the 
 thought which thrills in the heart of Italy. You will 
 never deny the sister nations. The life of the Country 
 shall grow through you in beauty and in strength, free 
 from servile fears and the hesitations of doubt, keeping 
 as its foicndatiofi the people, as its rule the consequences 
 of its principles logically deduced and energetically 
 applied, as its stre?igth the strength of all, as its outcome 
 the amelioration of all, as its e?id the fulfilment of the 
 mission which God has given it. And because you will 
 be ready to die for Humanity, the life of your Country 
 will be immortal.
 
 VI 
 
 DUTIES TO THE FAMILY 
 
 The Family is the Country of the heart. There is an 
 angel in the Family who, by the mysterious influence 
 of grace, of sweetness, and of love, renders the fulfilment 
 of duties less wearisome, sorrows less bitter. The only 
 pure joys unmixed with sadness which it is given to 
 man to taste upon earth are, thanks to this angel, the 
 joys of the Family. He who through fatality of cir- 
 cumstances has been unable to live the serene life of 
 the Family, beneath the wings of this angel, has a 
 shadow of melancholy resting upon his soul, and a 
 void in his heart which nothing can fill ; and I who 
 write these pages for you know it. Bless God who 
 created this angel, oh you who have the joys and 
 consolations of the Family. Do not hold them of little 
 account because you imagine that you can find elsewhere 
 more ardent joys or more immediate consolation for 
 your griefs. The Family contains an element of good 
 rarely found elsewhere, constancy. Its affections wind 
 themselves slowly around you, unheeded, but tenacious 
 and enduring as the ivy round the tree ; they follow^ you 
 hourly, and identify themselves silently with your life. 
 Often you are not aware of them, because they are a 
 part of yourselves ; but when you lose them you feel 
 that an indefinable something, something intimate and 
 necessary to your existence, is gone. You wander restless- 
 and uneasy. You may still be able to find brief joys 
 or consolations ; but not the supreme consolation, not 
 calm, the calm of the wave upon the lake, the calm 
 of trustful sleep, the sleep which stills the child upon 
 its mother's breast. 
 
 60
 
 The Duties of Man 6i 
 
 The angel of the Family is Woman. Mother, wife, or 
 sister. Woman is the caress of life, the soothing sweet- 
 ness of affection shed over its toils, a reflection for the 
 individual of the loving providence which watches over 
 Humanity. In her there is treasure enough of consoling 
 tenderness to allay every pain. Moreover for every one 
 of us she is the initiator of the future. The mother's 
 first kiss teaches the child love ; the first holy kiss of 
 the woman he 1 jves teaches man hope and faith in life ; 
 and love and faith create a desire for perfection and the 
 power of reaching towards it step by step ; create 
 the future, in short, of which the living symbol is the 
 child, link between us and the generations to come. 
 Through her the Family, with its divine mystery of 
 reproduction, points to Eternity. 
 
 Hold the Family sacred, then, O my brothers. Hold 
 it as an inseparable condition of life and repulse every 
 assault which may be made upon it by men imbued with 
 false and brutal philosophies, or by hasty thinkers who 
 seeing it too often the nursery of selfishness and of the 
 spirit of caste, grow angry and believe, like the barbarian, 
 that the only remedy for its evils is to destroy it. 
 
 The Family is the conception of God, not of man. No 
 human power can abolish it. Like the Country, and 
 much more than the Country, the Family is an element 
 of life. 
 
 Much more than the Country, I say. The Country, 
 sacred to-day, will perhaps some day disappear, when 
 every man shall reflect in his own conscience the moral 
 laws of Humanity ; but the Family will endure as long 
 as man endures. It is the cradle of Humanity. Like 
 every element of human life, it must be open to Progress, 
 and its tendencies, its aspirations, must improve from 
 epoch to epoch ; but no one may ever suppress it. 
 
 To sanctify the Family more and more and to link it 
 ever closer to the Country ; this is your mission. AVhat 
 the Country is to Humanity, the Family must be to the 
 Country. I have told you that the task of the Country 
 is to educate men ; even so the task of the family is to 
 educate a'h'zens ; Family and Country are the two extreme
 
 62 The Duties of Man 
 
 points of the same line. And where this is not so the 
 Family degenerates into egoism, the more disgusting 
 and brutal the more it prostitutes that most holy thing, 
 affection, by diverting it from its true purpose. 
 
 In the present day, egoism by force of circumstances 
 reigns too often and too much in the Family. Bad 
 social institutions generate it. In a society supported by 
 spies, police, prison, and the gallows, the poor mother, 
 trembling at every noble aspiration of her son, is im- 
 pelled to teach hi.ii distrust ; to say : Beivare ! the man 
 who speaks to thee of Country, of Liberty, of the Future, 
 andivho wishes to clasp thee to his breast, is perhaps nothing 
 else than a traitor. In a society in which merit is 
 dangerous, and wealth is the only basis of power, of 
 safety, of defence against persecution and arrogance, 
 affection impels the father to say to the youth athirst 
 for Truth : Beware ! in riches is thy safety ; Truth alone 
 cannot shield thee from the potver and corruption of others. 
 But I am speaking to you of a time when you will have 
 founded for your sons with your sweat and your blood a 
 Country of free men built up on merit and on the good 
 which each of you will have done for his brothers. Till 
 that time it is too true that you have one way only of 
 progress open to you, one supreme duty only to fulfil : 
 to enrol and prepare yourselves, to choose the right 
 moment and to fight and win your Italy by insurrection. 
 Then only will you be able to accomplish your other 
 duties without grave and constant obstacles. And then 
 when I shall probably be laid in the earth, you will read 
 these pages of mine again ; the few brotherly counsels 
 which they contain come from a heart which loves you, 
 and they are written with sincerity and conviction. 
 
 Love and respect Woman. Do not seek only con- 
 solation in her, but strength, inspiration, a redoubling 
 of your intellectual and moral faculties. Blot out of your 
 mind any idea of superiority to her ; you have none 
 whatever. The prejudice of ages has created through 
 unequal education and the peirennial oppression of the 
 laws that apparent intellectual inferiority which you use 
 to-day as an argument for ma.iintaining the oppression.
 
 The Duties of Man 63 
 
 But does not the history of all oppression teach you 
 that those who oppress rely always for their justification 
 upon a fact created by themselves ? The feudal classes 
 withheld education from you sons of the people almost 
 up to our own day, and then from your want of education 
 they drew, and still to-day draw, their arguments for 
 excluding you from the sanctuary of the city, from the 
 place where the laws are made, from that right to vote 
 which initiates your social mission. The owners of the 
 negroes in America declare the race radically inferior 
 and incapable of education and yet persecute whoever 
 seeks to educate it. For half a century the supporters 
 of the reigning families have affirmed that we Italians 
 are ill-fitted for liberty, and meanwhile by laws and by 
 the brute force of mercenary armies they keep every way 
 closed by which, if the disability did really exist, we 
 might overcome it for ourselves — as if tyranny could ever 
 be an education for liberty. 
 
 Now, we have all been, and still are, guilty of a like 
 offence towards Woman. Put far from you even the shadow 
 of this offence, since there is no graver offence in God's 
 sight than that which divides the human family into twO' 
 classes and imposes or allows the subjection of one to the 
 other. Before the one God and Father there is neither 
 man nor woman, but the hiimati being, the being in whom,, 
 under the aspect of man or of woman, those characters 
 exist which distinguish humanity from the order of the 
 animals ; namely, social tendency, capacity of learning, 
 and the faculty of progressing. Wherever these characters 
 reveal themselves, there human nature exists, and in 
 consequence equality of rights and of duties. Like two 
 distinct branches springing out of the same trunk, man 
 and woman spring in differing forms from a common base,, 
 which is humanity. No inequality exists between them, 
 but, as often happens with two men, a difference of 
 tendencies, of special vocations. Are two notes of the 
 same musical chord unequal or of different nature ? 
 Man and Woman are the two notes without which the 
 hu?nan chord is not possible. Take two Peoples, one 
 called by its peculiar gifts or by its conditions of life.
 
 64 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 to spread the idea of human association by means of 
 colonies, the other to preach it by the production of 
 universally admired masterpieces in art and literature ; 
 are their general duties and rights different ? Both these 
 Peoples are apostles, consciously or unconsciously, of 
 the same divine conception and are equals and 
 brothers in their mission. Man and Woman, like those 
 two Peoples, have distinct functions in Humanity, but 
 these functions are equally sacred and necessary to the 
 common development and are both representations of 
 the Thought which God has put like a soul into the 
 universe. Hold Woman, then, as the companion and 
 partaker not only of your joys and your sorrows, but 
 of your aspirations, your thoughts, your studies, and your 
 efforts for social amelioration. Hold her as your equal 
 in civil and political life. Be together, you and she, 
 the two wings of the hunuifi soul, lifting it towards the 
 ideal which we must attain. The Mosaic Bible has 
 said, God created the 7/ian, and the woman from the man ; 
 but your Bible, the Bible of the future, shall say, God 
 created Humanity, manifested in the woman and in the 
 man. 
 
 Love the children whom Providence sends you ; but 
 love them with a true, profound, stern love ; not with 
 a nerveless, irrational, blind love, which is egoism in 
 you, and ruin for them. In the name of all that is 
 most sacred never forget that you have the charge of 
 the future generations, that towards these souls which 
 are entrusted to you, towards Humanity, and before 
 God, you have the most tremendous responsibility which 
 the human being can be sensible of. You must initiate 
 them not into the pleasures and greeds of life, but into 
 life itself, into its duties, into the moral law which 
 governs it. Few mothers, few fathers, in this irreligious 
 century, especially in the well-to-do classes, understand 
 the gravity and sanctity of their educational mission. 
 Few mothers, few fathers, think that the many victims, 
 the incessant struggles, and the long martyrdom of our 
 times are in great measure the fruit of the egoism in- 
 :Stilled thirty years ago into their children's minds by
 
 The Duties of Man 65 
 
 weak mothers or careless fathers who allowed them to 
 get into the habit of regarding life not as a duty and 
 a mission, but as a search for pleasure, and an endeavour 
 after selfish well-being. For you, sons of labour, the 
 dangers are less great ; most of your children learn only 
 too well the life of privation. And, on the other hand, 
 you who are compelled by your inferior social condition 
 to continual toil have fewer possibilities of educating 
 them properly. Nevertheless even you can partly fulfil 
 the arduous task by your example and by your word. 
 
 You can do it by your example. 
 
 " Your children will be like you, corrupt or virtuous, 
 according as you yourselves are virtuous or corrupt. 
 
 " How can they become honest, compassionate, and 
 humane if you yourselves lack uprightness, and are 
 without charity for your brothers? How shall they 
 restrain their gross appetites if they see you give way 
 to intemperance ? How shall they preserve their natural 
 innocence intact if you do not fear to outrage modesty 
 in their presence by indecent acts and obscene words ? 
 
 "You are the living model upon which their im- 
 pressionable nature forms itself. It depends upon you 
 whether your sons turn out men or brutes." ^ 
 
 And you can educate them by your words. Speak 
 to them of their Country, of what it was, of what it 
 ought to be. When at evening the smiles of the mother, 
 and the artless prattle of the children upon your knee,, 
 make you forget the toils of the day, tell them over again 
 the great deeds of the common people in our ancient 
 republics ; teach them the names of the good men who 
 loved Italy and her people, and endeavoured through 
 suffering, calumny, and persecution to improve her 
 destinies. Instil into their young hearts not hatred of 
 the oppressor, but an energetic resolve to resist op- 
 pression. Let them learn from your lips, and from the 
 tranquil approval of their mother, how beautiful it is 
 to follow the paths of virtue, how great to stand up as 
 apostles of the truth, how holy to sacrifice oneself, if 
 needs be, for one's brothers. Kindle in their tender 
 
 ' Lamennais, Livre du Peuple, xii. , 
 
 D
 
 66 The Duties of Man 
 
 minds, while planting the germs of rebellion against 
 all authority usurped and sustained by force, reverence 
 for the true, the only authority, the authority of Virtue 
 crowned by Genius. See that they grow up hating 
 tyranny and anarchy alike, in the religion of a conscience 
 inspired but not chained down by tradition. The Nation 
 ought to help you in this work. And you have in the 
 name of your children the right to exact this from it. 
 Without a National Education there is no true Nation. 
 
 Love your parents. Do not let the family which 
 springs from you make you ever forget the family from 
 which you sprang. Too often indeed the new ties relax 
 the old, whereas they ought only to be a new link in 
 the chain of love which should bind together the three 
 generations of a family. Surround the white heads of 
 the mother and of the father with tender and respectful 
 affection till their last day. Strew their way to the 
 grave with flowers. Breathe over their weary souls a 
 fragrance of faith and immortality with the constancy 
 of your love. And may the affection which you keep 
 inviolate for your parents be a pledge of that which 
 your children will keep for you. 
 
 Parents, sisters and brothers, wife, children, let them 
 all be to you as branches growing in different order upon 
 the same tree. Sanctify the Family in the unity of love. 
 Make it a temple in which you may sacrifice together 
 to the Country. I do not know if you will be happy ; 
 but I do know that if you do thus there will come to 
 you even in the midst of adversity a sense of serene 
 peace, the repose of a tranquil conscience, which will 
 give you strength in every trial, and will keep an azure 
 space of sky open before your eyes in every tempest.
 
 VII 
 
 DUTIES TO YOURSELF 
 
 Prdimi7iaries 
 
 I HAVE said to you : You have life ; therefore you have 
 a law of life. . . . To develop yourselves, to act, to live 
 according to the law of life, is your first, nay, your only 
 Duty. I have told you that God has given you two 
 means of knowing what is your law of life : your 
 own conscience and the conscience of Humanity, the 
 general conviction of your fellow-men. I have told you 
 that whenever you interrogate your conscience, and find 
 its voice in harmony with the great voice of the human 
 race which history has transmitted to you, you are certain 
 of having the eternal, the immutable truth in your grasp. 
 
 At the present day it is only with difficulty that you 
 can properly interrogate the great voice with which 
 Humanity speaks to you through history ; you lack 
 really good popular books and you have no time. But 
 the men who by their ability and conscientiousness best 
 represent historical study and the science of Humanity 
 in the last half-century have deduced from this voice 
 some of the characters of our law of life. They have 
 found out that human nature is essentially social 
 and capable of education ; that as there is and can 
 be but one God, there can be but one Law for the 
 individual man and for collective Humanity ; and that 
 the fundamental and universal character of this Law is 
 Progress. From this truth, incontestable to-day because 
 all the branches of human knowledge confirm it, are 
 derived all your duties to yourself, and also all your 
 rights, which are summed up in one : the right to be 
 
 67
 
 68 The Duties of Man 
 
 absolutely unfette-i'cd and to be aided, within certain li7nits, 
 in the ftilfilnient of your duties. 
 
 You are and you feel yourselves free. All the 
 sophisms ci" a wretched philosophy which would sub- 
 siii■^^te a doctrine of I know not what fatalism for the 
 cr^' of the human conscience, cannot avail to silence 
 two invincible witnesses in favour of liberty ; remorse and 
 martyrdom. From Socrates to Jesus, from Jesus down 
 to the men who die from time to time for their Country, 
 the Martyrs of Faith raise their voices against that 
 slavish doctrine, crying out to you : " We too loved life ; 
 we loved the beings who made it dear to us and who 
 implored us to yield ; every impulse of our hearts cried 
 to us live/ but for the salvation of future generations 
 we chose to die." From Cain down to the vulgar spy 
 of our day, all those who betray their brothers, all the 
 men who have set forth on the path of evil, feel in the 
 depths of their soul self-condemnation, restlessness, 
 a reproachful voice saying to each of them. Why do you 
 abandon the paths of good 1 
 
 You are free, and therefore responsible. PVom this 
 moral liberty is derived your right to political liberty, 
 your duty to conquer it for yourselves and to keep it 
 inviolate, and the duty of others not to limit it. 
 
 You are capable of education. In each of you exists 
 a certain sum of faculties, of intellectual capacities and 
 moral tendencies, to which education alone can give life 
 and activity, and which otherwise would remain sterile 
 and inert, or only reveal themselves by flashes without 
 regular development. 
 
 Education is the bread of the soul. Just as physical 
 and organic life cannot grow and unfold without nourish- 
 ment, so the moral and intellectual life needs external 
 influences for its full development and manifestation, and 
 must assimilate a part, at least, of the ideas, afi'ections, 
 and aspirations of others. The life of the individual 
 springs up like the plant, each variety endowed with its 
 own existence and with special characters, upon a 
 common soil, and is nourished with the elements common 
 to the life of all. The individual is a shoot of Humanity,
 
 The Duties of Man 69 
 
 and nourishes and renews its own strength in the 
 strength of Humanity. This work of nourishment and 
 renewal is accompHshed by education, which transmits 
 to the individual directly or indirectly the resuhs of the 
 progress of the whole human race. It is therefore not 
 only because it is a necessity of your life, but because it 
 is a kind of holy communion with all your fellow-men, 
 and with all the generations which have lived, that is to 
 say, thought and acted, before yours, that you must win 
 education for yourselves as far as possible ; a moral and 
 intellectual education, which shall embrace and cultivate 
 all the faculties which God has given you as seed to 
 bring to fruit, and shall form and maintain a bond 
 between your individual life and that of collective 
 Humanity. 
 
 And in order that this work of education should 
 be the more rapidly accomplished, and that your 
 individual life should be linked more surely and in- 
 timately with the collective life of all, with the life of 
 Humanity, God has made you essentially social beings. 
 Every kind of lower being can live by itself, without 
 other communion than with nature, with the elements of 
 the physical world ; you cannot. At every step you have 
 need of your brothers ; and you could not satisfy the 
 simplest needs of life without aiding yourselves by their 
 work. Though superior to every other being by virtue 
 of association with your fellows, you are when isolated 
 inferior in strength to many animals, and weak and 
 incapable of development and of a complete existence. 
 All the noblest aspirations of your heart, such as love of 
 country, and also those less virtuous, such as desire of 
 glory and of others' praise, indicate your inborn tendency 
 to unite your life with the life of the millions who 
 surround you. You are, then, created for association. It 
 multiplies your strength a hundredfold ; makes the ideas 
 of others yours, and the progress of others yours ; and 
 raises, improves, and sanctifies your nature through the 
 affections and the growing sentiment of the unity of the 
 human family. The wider, the more intimate and 
 comprehensive your association with your brothers, the
 
 70 The Duties of Man 
 
 further will you advance on the path of individual 
 progress. 
 
 The law of life cannot be wholly accomplished 
 except by the united work of all. And for every great 
 advance, for every discovery of a portion of that law, 
 history shows a corresponding extension of human 
 association, a wider contact between peoples and peoples. 
 When the first Christians came to proclaim the unity of 
 human nature, in opposition to the pagan philosophy 
 which admitted two human natures, that of masters and 
 that of slaves, the Roman people had borne its eagles 
 into the midst of all the known peoples of Europe. 
 Before the Papacy — baleful to-day, but beneficial in the 
 first centuries of its institution — came to announce : the 
 spiritual poiver is higher than the temporal, the invaders, 
 whom we call the Barbarians, had brought the Germanic 
 and the Latin worlds into violent contact. Before the 
 idea of liberty as applying to the peoples had started 
 the conception of nationality which now agitates Europe 
 and is destined to triumph, the wars of the French 
 Revolution and of the Empire had roused and called 
 into action an element separate till then from the rest of 
 Europe, the Slav element. 
 
 Lastly, you are progressive beings. 
 
 This word Progress, unknown to antiquity, will 
 be from henceforth a sacred word for Humanity. It 
 comprehends a whole social, political, and religious 
 transformation. 
 
 Antiquity, the men of the old Oriental and Pagan 
 religions, believed in Fate, in Chance, in a mysterious 
 incomprehensible Power, the arbitrary disposer of human 
 things, creating and destroying alternately, without men 
 being able to understand, promote, or accelerate its 
 action. They believed that man was powerless to found 
 anything enduring and permanent upon our earth. 
 They believed that the peoples were condemned to 
 move for ever in the circle described by individuals here 
 below ; that they rose, mounted upwards to power, then 
 descended to old age, and fatally, irrevocably perished. 
 With the narrowest horizon of ideas and of facts before
 
 The Duties of Man 71 
 
 them, and without any knowledge of history beyond that 
 of their own nation, and often of their own city, they 
 regarded the human race solely as an aggregate of men, 
 without any life or law of its own, and derived their ideas 
 of it from contemplation of the individual only. The 
 consequence of such doctrines was a disposition to 
 accept existing facts without troubling or hoping to 
 change them. Where circumstances had founded a 
 republican form of government, the men of those times 
 were republicans ; where despotism reigned, they were 
 submissive slaves, indifferent to progress. But since 
 they found the human family everywhere, under a 
 republican government and under tyranny alike, divided 
 either into four castes, as in the East, or into two, free 
 citizens and slaves, as in Greece, they accepted the 
 division of castes, or the belief in two different kinds 
 of men ; even Plato and Aristotle, the most powerful 
 intellects of the Greek world, accepted it. The emanci- 
 pation of your class would have been an impossibility 
 among men like these. 
 
 The men who founded upon the words of Jesus a 
 religion superior to all the beliefs of the ancient East 
 and of Paganism, dimly foresaw, but did not grasp the 
 holy idea contained in this word. Progress. They under- 
 stood the unity of the human race, the unity of the law, 
 and the perfectibility of man ; but they did not understand 
 the power of accomplishing it which God has given to 
 man, nor the ivay in which it must be accomplished. 
 They limited themselves also to deducing the rule of life 
 from the contemplation of the individual. Humanity 
 as a collective body remained unknown to them. They 
 recognised a Providence and substituted it for the blind 
 Fatality of the ancients ; but they recognised it as the 
 protector of the individual, not as the law of Humanity. 
 Their mental position between the immensity of the 
 ideal of perfectibility which they had conceived, and the 
 sense of the brief miserable life of the individual, created 
 a need for an intermediary term between the two, 
 between God and man ; and not having grasped the idea 
 of a collective humanity, they had recourse to that of
 
 72 The Duties of Man 
 
 a divine incarnation ; they declared that faith in this 
 incarnation was the only source of salvation, of strength, 
 ■ of grace for men. 
 
 Not suspecting the continuous revelation which 
 descends from God upon man through Humanity, they 
 believed in an immediate and single revelation given at 
 one fixed moment, and by the special favour of God. 
 They perceived the link which binds men together in 
 God, but they did not perceive that which binds them 
 together here upon earth in Humanity. The succession 
 of the generations was of little importance to those who 
 did not feel how one generation acts upon another ; they 
 accustomed themselves therefore to disregard them, and 
 strove to detach man from the world and from the things 
 which concern Humanity as a whole, and they finished 
 by calling the earth, which they abandoned to the exist- 
 ing powers, a mere abode of expiation, putting it in 
 -antagonism to heaven, whither man might climb by 
 means of grace and faith, but from which without those 
 means he was eternally exiled. Revelation being in their 
 opinion immediate and vouchsafed once only at a given 
 period, they concluded that nothing could be added to it, 
 and that the depositaries of this revelation were infallible. 
 They forgot that m a solemn moment, and with a sublime 
 intuition of the future, Jesus had said : / have many 
 things to say unto you, but ye cannot hear them noiv. 
 Hoivbeit when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will 
 guide you into all truth ; for he shall not speak of himself 
 but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak} These 
 words contain a forecast of the idea of progress and of 
 the continuous revelation of the truth through the 
 medium of Humanity ; in them is found the justification 
 -of the formula which reawakened Rome will offer to 
 Italy in the words " God and the People " inscribed on the 
 front of its republican decrees. But the men who held 
 the beliefs of the middle ages could not understand it. 
 The times were not yet ripe. 
 
 The whole edifice of the creeds which succeeded to 
 Paganism rests upon the foundations just indicated. It 
 
 ' St. John, chap. xvi.
 
 The Duties of Man 73 
 
 is clear that your emancipation here on earth cannot be 
 based upon these. 
 
 Thirteen hundred years after the words of Jesus 
 which I have quoted were spoken, a man, an Itahan, the 
 greatest of all Italians, wrote the following truths : "God 
 is one, the Universe is God's thought ; the Universe 
 therefore is also one. All things come from God. All 
 partake more or less of the divine nature, according to 
 the end for which they are created. Man is the noblest 
 of all created things. God has poured into him more of 
 His own nature than into the others. Everything which 
 comes from God tends towards the perfection of which 
 it is capable. The capacity of perfection in man is 
 unlimited. Humanity is one. God has made nothing 
 useless ; and because there is one Humanity only, there 
 must be a single aim for all men, a work to be accom- 
 plished by the labour of all together. The human race 
 must therefore work in union so that all the intellectual 
 powers diffused in it may obtain the highest possible de- 
 velopment in the sphere of thought and of action. There 
 exists, then, a universal Religion for the human race." 
 
 The man who gave utterance to these thoughts was 
 named Dante. Every city of Italy, when Italy is free 
 and united, ought to raise a statue to him, since these 
 thoughts contain the germ of the Religion of the Future. 
 He wrote them in Latin and Italian books entitled De 
 Monarchia and // Conviio, difficult to understand, and 
 neglected in the present day even by those who call 
 themselves scholars. But these ideas, once sown in the 
 world of intellect, can never die. Others reap them 
 even when they forget their origin. Men admire the oak, 
 but who remembers the acorn from which it sprang ? 
 
 The seed which Dante cast abroad has borne fruit. 
 Tended and fertilised from time to time by some 
 powerful intellect, it developed towards the end of the 
 eighteenth century. The idea of Progress as the law 
 of life, accepted and developed, veritied by history, 
 and confirmed by science, became the banner of the 
 future. To-day there is no serious thinker who does 
 not regard it as the pivot of his work.
 
 74 The Duties of Man 
 
 We know to-day that the law of life is Progress. 
 Progress for the individual, progress for Humanity. 
 Humanity fulfils that law on earth ; the Individual on 
 earth and elsewhere. One only God ; one only Law. 
 From the first moment of its existence Humanity has 
 been gradually but inevitably fulfilling that Law. Truth 
 has never manifested itself wholly or all at once. A 
 continuous revelation manifests a fragment of the truth, 
 a word of the Law, from age to age. Each of these ivords 
 profoundly modifies human life upon the path tov/ards 
 perfection, and constitutes a belief, a Faith. The develop- 
 ment of the religious Idea is, then, indefinitely progressive; 
 and the successive beliefs, unfolding and purifying this 
 Idea ever more and more, will one day, like columns of 
 a temple, build up the Pantheon of Humanity, the one 
 great religion of our earth. The men blessed by God 
 with genius and with more than common virtue are its 
 apostles ; the People, the collective sense of Humanity, 
 is its interpreter, and accepts this revelation of Truth, 
 transmits it from generation to generation, and reduces 
 it to practice by applying it to the different branches 
 and manifestations of human life. 
 
 Humanity is like a man who lives for an indefinite 
 period and is always learning. There is not, therefore, 
 and there cannot be, infallibility in men, or in Powers; 
 there is not, and cannot be, a privileged class of deposi- 
 taries and interpreters of the Law ; there is not, and 
 cannot be, a need of any intermediary between God and 
 man save Humanity alone. God, by preordaining a pro- 
 vidential design of progressive education for Humanity, 
 and planting the instinct of progress in the heart of every 
 man, has also put into human nature the faculties and 
 powers necessary to fulfil it. Individual man, a free and 
 responsible creature, is able to use or abuse them accord- 
 ing to whether he keeps to the path of Duty, or yields to 
 the blind seductions of Egoism ; he can delay or hasten 
 his own progress ; but the providential design cannot 
 be annulled by any human power. The education of 
 Humanity must complete itself; thus we see out of the 
 barbaric invasions which seemed to extinguish all civilised
 
 The Duties of Man 75 
 
 life a new civilisation arise superior to the old, and 
 diffused over a wider zone of the earth ; out of a tyranny 
 exercised by individuals we see a more rapid develop- 
 ment of liberty immediately issue. 
 
 The Law of Progress must be accomplished here upon 
 earth as elsewhere. There is no antagonism between 
 earth and heaven : and it is a blasphemy to suppose that 
 we can, without incurring guilt, despise the work of God, 
 the house which He has given us, and abandon it to the 
 Powers that be, whatever their nature, to the influences 
 of Evil, of Egoism, and of Tyranny. The earth is not a 
 place of expiation ; it is the place for working to realise 
 the ideal of truth and justice which each of us bears im- 
 planted in his soul ; it is a ladder towards that Perfection 
 which we can only reach by glorifying God in Humanity 
 with our works and by consecrating ourselves to trans- 
 lating into fact as much as we can of His design. The 
 judgment which will be pronounced upon each one of us, 
 either decreeing our upward progress upon the ladder of 
 Perfection, or condemning us to drag ourselves once 
 again along the course which we have already trodden 
 with barren results or in actual sin, will be founded on 
 the good which we have done to our brothers, upon the 
 degree of progress which we have helped others to 
 attain. A more and more intimate and extended 
 association with our fellow-men is the means by which 
 our strength will be multiplied, the field on which our 
 duties must be accomplished, the way to realise progress 
 in action. We must aim at making the whole of 
 Humanity one Family, each member of which shall 
 represent in himself the moral law for the benefit of the 
 others. And as the perfecting of Humanity is accom- 
 plished from age to age, from generation to generation, 
 so the perfecting of the individual is accomplished from 
 existence to existence, more or less rapidly according to 
 our own efforts. 
 
 These are some of the truths contained in that word 
 Progress from which shall come forth the Religion of 
 the Future. In that word alone can your emancipation 
 be achieved.
 
 VIII 
 
 LIBERTY 
 
 You live. The life which is in you is not the work of 
 Chance ; the word Chance has no meaning whatever 
 and was only invented to express the ignorance of men 
 about certain things. The life which is in you comes 
 from God, and reveals in its progressive development 
 an intelligent design. Your life has necessarily then an 
 aim, a purpose. 
 
 The ultimate aim for which we were created is at 
 present unknown to us and cannot be otherwise ; but 
 this is no reason why we should deny it. Does the babe 
 know the purpose towards which it must tend through 
 Family, Country, Humanity ? No ; but the purpose exists, 
 and we are beginning to know it for him. Humanity 
 is God's babe ; He knows the end towards which it 
 must develop. Humanity is only just beginning to- 
 day to understand that Progress is its law ; it is only 
 just beginning to understand, uncertainly, something of 
 the Universe around it, and the greater part of the indi- 
 viduals who compose it are still quite unfit, in consequence 
 of barbarism, slavery, or absolute lack of education, for 
 the study of this Law and of the Universe which is 
 necessary before we can understand ourselves. Only a 
 minority of the men who people our little Europe are 
 capable of developing their intellectual faculties for the 
 purpose of acquiring knowledge. In you yourselves, 
 most of you deprived of instruction and all subjected by 
 necessity to a life of badly organised physical labour, 
 those faculties lie dormant and are unable to bring 
 their tribute to the pyramid of knowledge. How, then, 
 can we expect to know to-day that which requires the 
 
 76
 
 The Duties of Man 77 
 
 associated work of all ? Why rebel against our not 
 having yet reached the point which will constitute the 
 last step of our earthly Progress, when as yet only a few 
 of us, and those disunited, are beginning even to lisp 
 that sacred and fruitful word ? Let us resign ourselves, 
 then, to ignorance of the things which must be inacces- 
 sible to us for a long while yet, and do not let us abandon 
 in childish anger the study of those which we are able to 
 discover. The discovery of the truth demands modesty 
 and self-restraint, as much as constancy. Many more souls 
 have been lost or led astray from the right path by 
 impatience and human pride than by deliberate wicked- 
 ness. It is this truth which the ancients would teach 
 us when they tell how the Despot ambitious of scaling 
 the heavens could only build up a tower of confusion, 
 and how the Giants who assailed Olympus lie blasted 
 by thunderbolts beneath our volcanic mountains. 
 
 The important thing for us to be convinced of is, that 
 whatever the end may be for which we are destined, we 
 can only discover and attain it by the progressive develop- 
 ment and the exercise of our intellectual faculties. Our 
 faculties are the instruments of labour given us by God. 
 It is necessary therefore that their development should 
 be furthered and helped, and their exercise be free and 
 protected. Without Liberty you cannot fulfil any of 
 your duties ; you have therefore a right to liberty and 
 the duty to wrest it by any means from any power 
 whatever which denies it to you. 
 
 Without Liberty morality does not exist, because if 
 there is not freedom of choice between good and evil, 
 between devotion to the common progress and the 
 spirit of egoism, there is no responsibility. Without 
 Liberty no true society exists, because between free men 
 and slaves there can be no associatio?i, but only dominion 
 of some over the others. Liberty is sacred as the indi- 
 vidual whose life it represents is sacred. Where there 
 is not Liberty, life is reduced to a mere organic function. 
 A man who allows his liberty to be violated is false to 
 his own nature and a rebel against the decrees of God. 
 
 There is no liberty where a class, a family, or a man
 
 78 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 assumes dominion over others in virtue of a pretended 
 divine right, or of a privilege derived from birth or 
 wealth. Liberty must be for all and in the sight of all. 
 God does not delegate sovereignty to any individual; 
 that degree of sovereignty which can be represented on 
 our earth is entrusted by God to Humanity, to the Nations, 
 to Society. And this also ceases and abandons the 
 collective fractions of Humanity if they do not use it 
 for good, for the fulfilment of the providential design. 
 There exists, then, no sovereignty of right in any 
 one ; sovereignty is in the Aim, and in the actions 
 which lead to it. The actions and the aim towards 
 which we are advancing must be submitted to the 
 judgment of all. There is not and cannot be, then, 
 any permanetit sovereignty. That institution which 
 we call Government is only a Direction ; a mission en- 
 trusted to a few in order to attain more speedily the 
 aim of the Nation ; and if they are false to this mission, 
 the directing power entrusted to these few must cease. 
 Every man called to the Government is an administrator 
 of the common will ; he must be elected and must be 
 subject to recall whenever he misunderstands or deliber- 
 ately opposes that will. There cannot exist, then, I 
 repeat, a class or family which holds the power by its 
 own right, without a violation of your liberty. How can 
 you call yourselves free in the presence of men who 
 possess the power to command you without your consent? 
 The republic is the only legitimate and logical form of 
 government. 
 
 You have no master but God in heaven and the 
 People on earth. When you have discovered a line of 
 the Law, of God's wnll, you must bless it and obey it. 
 When the People, the collective body of your fellows, 
 declare that they hold a certain belief, you must bow 
 your head and abstain from every act of rebellion. 
 
 But there are things which constitute your individual 
 being and are essential to human life. And over these 
 not even the People has any right. No majority, no 
 collective force can rob you of that which makes you 
 men. No majority can decree a tyranny and extinguish
 
 The Duties of Man 79 
 
 or alienate its own liberty. Against a people who would 
 commit such suicide you cannot use force, but the right 
 of protest by whatever means circumstances may suggest 
 to you lives and will live in each of you eternally. 
 
 You ought to have liberty and everything that is 
 indispensable for the moral and material nourishment 
 of life. 
 
 Personal liberty ; liberty of locomotion ; liberty of re- 
 ligious belief; liberty of opinion on all subjects ; liberty of 
 expressing opinion through the press or by any other 
 peaceful method ; liberty of association so as to be able to 
 cultivate your own minds by contact with the minds of 
 others ; liberty of trade in all the productions of your 
 brains and hands : these are all things which no one may 
 take from you — except on certain rare occasions which it 
 is not necessary to mention now — without grave injustice, 
 without arousing in you the duty to protest. 
 
 No one has the right, in the name of society, to imprison 
 you or to subject your person to restraint or to espion- 
 age, without telling you why with the least possible 
 delay, and conducting you promptly before the judicial 
 authority of the country. No one has the right to impede 
 you by passports or other restrictions from passing from 
 one part to another of your native land. No one has any 
 right of persecution or intolerance or exclusive legislation 
 over your religious opinions : nothing except the great 
 pacific voice of Humanity has the right to interpose 
 itself between God and your conscience. God has given 
 you thought ; no one has the right to restrain it, or to for- 
 bid the expression of it, which is the communion of your 
 soul with the soul of your brothers, and the only way of 
 progress which we have. The press must be absolutely 
 free; the rights of the intellect are inviolable, and any 
 preventive censorship is tyranny ; society may only punish 
 the offences of the pen, such as the inculcation of 
 crime and openly immoral teaching, as it punishes other 
 offences. Punishment decreed by a solemn public 
 judgment is a consequence of human responsibility, 
 while every intervention beforehand is a negation of 
 liberty. Peaceful association is sacred, like thought ; God
 
 8o The Duties of Man 
 
 planted the tendency in you as a perennial means of 
 progress, a pledge of that unity which the human family 
 is destined one day to attain ; no power has any right 
 to impede or limit it. The duty of each of you is 
 to use the life which God gave you, to preserve and 
 develop it ; each of you, then, owes to life a debt 
 of labour, the sole means of its material sustenance. 
 Labour is sacred. No one has the right to forbid it or 
 fetter it or make it impossible by arbitrary regulations : 
 no one has'the right to restrain free traffic in its products ; 
 your native land is your market, from no part of which 
 you may be shut out. 
 
 But when you have obtained the recognition of these 
 liberties as sacred — when you have finally established 
 the state upon the votes of all and in such a manner 
 that all the ways which can lead to the development 
 of human faculties shall be open to the individual — then, 
 remember that still above each of you stands the great 
 aim which it is your duty to attain : the moral perfection 
 of yourself and of others, an ever more intimate and 
 wider communion between all the members of the human 
 family, so that at some future day it shall recognise one 
 Law only. 
 
 "Your task is to form the universal family, to build 
 the City of God, and by a continuous labour gradually 
 to translate His work in Humanity into fact. 
 
 " When you love one another as brothers and treat each 
 other reciprocally as such, and each one, seeking his own 
 good in the good of all, shall identify his own life with 
 the life of all, his own interests with the interests of all,, 
 and shall be always ready to sacrifice himself for all the 
 members of the common family, and they equally ready 
 to sacrifice themselves for him, most of the ills which 
 weigh to-day upon the human race will vanish like the 
 thick mists gathered upon the horizon vanish at the 
 rising of the sun ; since it is His will that Love shall 
 unite little by little, and ever more closely, the scattered 
 elements of Humanity and order them in a single body, 
 and Humanity be one, as He is one." ^ 
 
 ^ Lamennais, Livre'du Peuple, iii.
 
 The Duties of Man 8i 
 
 Do not let these words, spoken by a man who lived 
 and died like a saint and who loved the people and their 
 future with an immense love, ever be out of your minds, 
 O my brothers. Liberty is only a ineans : woe to you 
 and to your future if you ever accustom yourselves to 
 regard it as an end. Your individual being has duties 
 and rights which may never be given up to any one ; but 
 woe to you and to your future if the respect which you 
 owe to what constitutes your individual life should ever 
 degenerate into a fatal egoism ! Your Liberty is not the 
 negation of all authority ; it is the negation of all authority 
 which does not represent the collective purpose of the 
 Nation, and which presumes to establish and support 
 itself upon any other foundation than that of your free 
 and spontaneous consent. The doctrines of casuists 
 have in these latter times perverted the sacred concep- 
 tion of Liberty ; some have reduced it to a mean immoral 
 individualisju — have said that the Ego is everything and 
 that the one aim of human labour and social organisation 
 ought to be the satisfaction of its desires ; others have 
 declared that all government, all authority, is an inevit- 
 able evil, but that it must be restricted and fettered 
 as much as possible ; that Liberty has no limits, 
 that the sole task of every society is to promote it 
 indefinitely ; that a man has the right to use and abuse 
 Liberty, provided that his action does not result directly 
 in evil to others ; and that a government has no mission 
 beyond that of preventirtg one individual from injuring 
 another. Reject these false doctrines, O my brothers ; 
 it is they who delay Italy even now upon the road of 
 her future greatness. The first has generated the egoism 
 of class ; the second turns society, which ought, if well 
 ordered, to represent your collective purpose and life, 
 into nothing more than a soldier or police officer charged 
 to maintain an apparent peace. Both debase Liberty 
 into Anarchy ; they abolish the idea of collective moral 
 improvement ; abolish the mission of education and of 
 Progress which Society ought to take upon itself If 
 you should understand Liberty in this way you would 
 deserve to lose it, and sooner or later you would lose it.
 
 82 The Duties of Man 
 
 Your Liberty will be fsacred so long as it develops 
 under the ruling influence of the Idea of Duty and of 
 Faith in the common perfectibility. Your Liberty will 
 flourish, protected by God and by men, so long as you 
 regard it not as the right to use and to abuse your 
 faculties in any direction which it pleases you to choose, 
 but as the right to choose freely and according to your 
 special tendencies a means of doing good.
 
 IX 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 God has made you capable of education. It is there- 
 fore your duty to educate yourselves as far as in you lies, 
 and your right that the society to which you belong 
 should not hinder you in your work of education, but 
 should help you in it and supply you with means of 
 education when you lack them. 
 
 Your liberty, your rights, your emancipation from 
 unjust social conditions, the life-work which each of you 
 has to fulfil here on earth, depend upon the degree of 
 education which it is given you to obtain. Without 
 education you cannot choose rightly between good and 
 evil; you cannot acquire a knowledge of your own 
 rights ; you cannot obtain that share in political life with- 
 out which you will never succeed in emancipating your- 
 selves ; you cannot define your own life-work to your- 
 selves. Education is the bread of your souls. Without 
 it your faculties lie numb and unfruitful, as the vital 
 power which dwells in the seed lies sterile if it is cast into 
 untilled soil and lacks the benefit of irrigation and the 
 care of a diligent husbandman. 
 
 At the present day you either have no education or else 
 only bad or inadequate instruction, given you by men 
 and powers which represent nothing except themselves 
 and observe no guiding principle. The best of them 
 beheve that they have done all that is required of 
 them if they have opened upon the territory which 
 they govern a certain number of schools, unequally 
 distributed, in which your children may receive some 
 degree of elementary teaching. This teaching consists 
 principally of reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
 
 83
 
 84 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 Such teaching is called instruction ; and differs from 
 education as much as our organs differ from our life. 
 Our organs are not life ; they are only its instruments 
 and its means of manifesting itself; they do not rule or 
 direct it, and they are equally the means of action for the 
 most saintly or the most corrupt life. In the same way 
 instruction provides the means of putting into practice 
 what is taught by education, but cannot take the place of 
 education. 
 
 Education is addressed to the tjioral faculties ; 
 instruction to the intellectual. The first develops in man 
 the knowledge of his duties; the second makes him 
 capable of fulfilling them. Without instruction, education 
 would be too often ineffective ; without education 
 ifistruction would be a lever lacking a fulcrum. You can 
 read : what does that amount to if you cannot tell which 
 books contain error, which the truth? You are able by 
 writing to communicate your thoughts to your brothers ; 
 what is the use if your thoughts only express egoism ? 
 Instruction, like riches, can be a source of either good or 
 evil according to the intention with which it is used. 
 Consecrated to the general progress it is a means of 
 civilisation and of liberty ; used only for personal 
 advantage it becomes a means of tyranny and corruption. 
 In Europe to-day instrtiction unaccompanied by a 
 corresponding degree of moral education is a very grievous 
 evil ; it keeps up the inequality between class and 
 class of the same people and inclines the mind to 
 calculation, to egoism, to compromises between justice and 
 injustice and to all false doctrine. 
 
 The distinction between the men who offer you more 
 or less instr2iction, and those who preach education to 
 you, is deeper than you suppose, and I must devote a 
 few words specially to the subject. 
 
 Two schools of thought divide the camp of those who 
 fight for liberty against despotism. The first declare 
 that sovereignty resides in the individual ; the second 
 maintains that it belongs to society only, and rules by 
 means of the expressed will of the majority. The first 
 imagines that it has fulfilled its peculiar mission when
 
 The Duties of Man 85 
 
 it has proclaimed the rights believed to be inherent in 
 human nature, and has safeguarded liberty ; the second 
 looks almost exclusively to association, and deduces the 
 duties of each individual from the compact which con- 
 stitutes that associatiofi. The first does not see beyond 
 what I have called instruction, because instruction tends 
 in fact to give facilities of development to the individual 
 faculties, but without any general direction ; the second 
 understands the necessity of an education which is for 
 it the manifestation of the social programme. The first 
 leads inevitably to moral anarchy ; the second tends to 
 forget the rights of liberty, and runs a risk of leading 
 to the despotism of the majority. 
 
 To the first of these schools that generation of men 
 belonged who were called in France doctrinaires, who 
 betrayed the hopes of the people after the Revolution 
 of 1830, and by proclaiming liberty of instruction and 
 nothing else, perpetuated the governing monopoly in the 
 hands of the iniddle class, which possesses more means 
 of developing its individual faculties ; the second is 
 unfortunately only represented to-day by sects and 
 powers belonging to antiquated beliefs, and hostile to 
 the dogma of the future, Progress. 
 
 Both these schools err through too narrow and 
 exclusive aims. 
 
 The truth is this : All sovereignty is in God, in the 
 moral law, in the providential design which governs 
 the world — and which is gradually revealed by the in- 
 spirations of men of virtuous genius, and by the natural 
 tendency of Humanity in the different epochs of its 
 existence — in the purpose which we have to attain, and 
 the mission which we have to fulfil. There is no 
 sovereignty in the individual, there is none in society 
 except in so far as the one and the other conform to 
 that design, to that law, and direct themselves towards 
 the attainment of that purpose. An individual who 
 rules is either the best interpreter of the moral law 
 and governs in its name, or a usurper to be overthrown. 
 The mere vote of a majority does not constitute 
 sovereignty, if it is evidently adverse to the supreme
 
 86 The Duties of Man 
 
 moral law, or deliberately closes the way to future 
 progress. Social good, liberty, progress ; outside these 
 three terms there can be no sovereignty. 
 
 Education teaches in what social welfare consists. 
 
 Instruction secures for the individual the free choice 
 of means of obtaining a continuous progress in the 
 conception of social welfare. 
 
 It is of first importance to you that your sons should 
 be taught what are the ruling principles and beliefs 
 which guide the lives of their fellow-men in their own 
 times and in their own country ; what the moral, social, 
 and political programme of their nation is ; what the 
 spirit of the legislation by which their deeds will have to 
 be judged ; what degree of progress Humanity has 
 already attained, and that which it has yet to attain. 
 And it is important to you that they should feel them- 
 selves from their earliest years united in the spirit of 
 equality and of love for a common aim, with the 
 millions of brothers that God has given them. 
 
 The Education which shall give your children this sort 
 of teaching can come only from the Nation. 
 
 The moral teaching of to-day is mere anarchy. Left 
 exclusively to the parents, it is nil where poverty and 
 the necessity of an almost incessant material toil deprive 
 them of time for educating their children themselves, 
 and of means of providing other teachers ; it is bad 
 where egoism and corruption have perverted and con- 
 taminated the family. When means exist the young 
 ones are imbued with superstitious or materialistic ideas, 
 with tendencies towards Liberty or towards cowardly 
 resignation, towards aristocracy or reaction against aristo- 
 cracy, according to whether a layman or priest is chosen 
 for the instructor by the paternal inclination. Taught 
 thus, how can they when they are grown to manhood 
 associate themselves in brotherly union for a common 
 task, and represent in their own persons the unity of the 
 country ? Society calls upon them to further the develop- 
 ment of a common idea into which they have never been 
 initiated. Society punishes them for violation of laws 
 of which they are still ignorant, and the spirit and
 
 The Duties of Man 87 
 
 scope of which are never taught by society to the 
 citizen. Society desires of them co-operation and 
 sacrifice for an end which no teacher has unfolded to 
 them at the opening of their lives as citizens. Strange 
 to say, the Doctrinaire School which I have mentioned 
 above recognises the right to rule and teach the young 
 in each individual, but not in the association of all, not 
 in the Nation. Their cry. Liberty of teaching, disinherits 
 the country of its right of moral direction. They 
 declare the uniformity of the monetary system and of 
 weights and measures to be of first importance ; but 
 the uniformity of the principles on which the national 
 life must be founded and developed is nothing to them. 
 You should not let yourselves be beguiled by this cry 
 which almost all the modern supporters of Constitutional 
 Governments repeat one after the other. 
 
 Without National Education, from which alone a 
 national conscience can issue, a Nation has no moral 
 existence. 
 
 Without National Education common to all the 
 citizens, equality of duties and of rights is a formula 
 devoid of meaning ; the knowledge of duties and the 
 capacity of exercising rights are left to the chance of 
 fortune or to the arbitrary will of those who choose the 
 teachers. 
 
 The men who proclaim their opposition to uniformity 
 of education invoke liberty. Whose liberty? That of 
 the fathers or of the children ? The liberty of the children 
 is violated, in their system, by the paternal despotism ; 
 the liberty of the younger generations is sacrificed to 
 the old ; the liberty of progress becomes an illusion. 
 Individual beliefs, perhaps false and hostile to progress, 
 are alone transmitted to the child, and with the weight 
 of the paternal authority, at an age when inquiry into 
 them is impossible. Later on, the destiny which chains 
 most of you to material labour the whole day long 
 will prevent the young soul, already impressed with 
 these beliefs, from comparing them with others and 
 modifying them. In the name of that lying liberty, 
 the anarchical system, of which I now speak, tends to
 
 88 The Duties of Man 
 
 found and perpetuate the worst of all despotisms, diinoral 
 caste. 
 
 What this system advocates should be properly called 
 arbitrary will, not Liberty. True Liberty cannot 
 exist without equality, and there can be no equality 
 among those who do not proceed from one basis, from 
 a common principle, from a uniform sense of Duty. 
 Liberty cannot be exercised outside that sense of Duty. 
 I told you a few pages back that true Liberty does 
 not consist in the right to choose evil, but in the right 
 to choose between the paths which lead to good. The 
 liberty invoked by these false philosophers is an arbitrary 
 right given to the father to choose evil for the son. What ? 
 If a father threatened to mutilate or injure in any way 
 the body of his child, society would interfere, invoked 
 by public opinion ; and shall the soul^ the mind of this 
 being be of less account than the body? Shall not 
 society protect it from the mutilation of its faculties, 
 ignorance, and from the perversion of the moral sense, 
 superstition ? 
 
 That cry of liberty of teaching served a useful purpose 
 
 at the time when it first arose, and is useful also in the 
 
 present day whenever moral education is the monopoly 
 
 of a despotic Government, of a retrograde caste, or 
 
 a priesthood antagonistic by the nature of its dogmas 
 
 to Progress. It was a weapon against tyranny, an 
 
 imperfect but indispensable watchword of emancipation. 
 
 Let it serve you wherever you are slaves. But I am 
 
 speaking to you of a time when religious faith shall 
 
 write the word Progress on the doors of the temple, and 
 
 every public institution shall repeat this word in various 
 
 forms ; when National Education shall at the conclusion 
 
 of its teaching dismiss the pupils with these words : 
 
 To you, destined to live under a common compact with us, 
 
 we have taught the fundamental bases of this compact, 
 
 the principles ifi which your Nation believes to-day. But 
 
 remember that the first of these principles is Progress. 
 
 Remember that your mission as a man and as a citizen 
 
 is to improve the mind and the heart of your brothers, 
 
 wherever you can. Go, examine, co7npare, and if you
 
 The Duties of Man 89 
 
 discover a truth superior to what we believe ive possess, 
 publish it boldly and you will have the blessing of your 
 Country. Then, but not before, renounce that cry of 
 liberty of teachitig as unequal to your needs and fatal 
 to the unity of the Country. Ask, and exact, the 
 establishment of a system of free national education, 
 compulsory for all. 
 
 It is the duty of the Nation to communicate its 
 programme to every citizen. Every citizen ought to 
 receive in its schools moral teaching, a course in the 
 history of nationalities, including a rapid survey of the 
 progress of Humanity, and in the history of his own 
 country, a popular exposition of the principles which 
 direct the legislation of the country, and the elementary 
 instruction about which there is no dispute. Every 
 citizen ought to learn in these schools equality and 
 love. 
 
 This programme once transmitted to the citizens, 
 ^ Liberty regains its rights. Not only the teaching of the 
 family, but every other is sacred. Every man has 
 an unlimited right to communicate his own ideas to 
 others ; every man has the right to hear them. Society 
 ought to protect, to encourage, the free expression of 
 thought in every form, and to throw open every way for 
 the development and modification of the social pro- 
 gramme in the direction of Good. 
 
 /
 
 X 
 
 ASSOCIATION — PROGRESS 
 
 God has made you social and progressive beings. It is 
 your duty, then, to associate yourselves and to progress 
 as much as is possible in the sphere of activity in which 
 you are placed by circumstances, and it is your right to 
 demand that the society to which you belong shall not 
 impede you in your work of association and of progress, 
 but shall help you in it and supply you with the means 
 of association and of progress if you lack them. 
 
 Liberty gives you the power of choosing between good 
 and evil, that is, between duty and egoism. Education 
 must teach you how to c/ioose. Association must give 
 you the means with which to put your choice into 
 practice. Progress is the erid which you must have in 
 sight when you choose and is at the same time, when 
 visibly achieved, the proof that you were not mistaken 
 in your choice. When a single one of these conditions 
 is betrayed or neglected, neither the i?ian nor the citize?t 
 exists, or he exists only in an imperfect state, arrested in 
 his development. 
 
 You must fight, then, for all these things and especially 
 for the right of Association, without which liberty and 
 education would be useless. 
 
 The right of Association is as sacred as religion, which 
 is the association of souls. You are all sons of God ; 
 you are therefore brothers, and is it not a crime to 
 restrict association, comiminioii between brothers ? 
 
 The word communion, used deliberately here, was 
 spoken to you by that Christianity which men pro- 
 claimed in the past as the immutable truth, but which 
 is in fact one step only in the ascending series of the 
 
 go
 
 The Duties of Man 91 
 
 religious manifestations of Humanity. And it is a holy 
 word. It taught men that they were a single family of 
 equals in God, and it united master and slave in the 
 same thought of salvation, in the same hope, and the 
 same love of heaven. 
 
 It was an immense advance on earlier times when 
 people and philosophers believed the souls of citizens 
 and of slaves to be of different nature. This mission 
 was enough for Christianity. The communion was the 
 symbol of the equality and the brotherhood of souls ; it 
 remained for Humanity to expand and develop the truth 
 hidden in that symbol. 
 
 The Church could not and did not do it. Timid and 
 uncertain in its beginning, allied with princes and tem- 
 poral powers later, and imbued by self-interest with an 
 aristocratic tendency alien to the spirit of its Founder, it 
 wandered from the right way and retrograded so far as 
 to diminish the value of the communion by limiting it for 
 laymen to communion in bread alone and reserving for 
 priests communion in the two kinds. 
 
 Thenceforward the cry of all who felt the right of the 
 whole human family to an unrestricted communion, 
 without distinction between ecclesiastics and laymen, 
 was, Commu7iio7i in both kinds for the people ; the chalice 
 for the people ! In the fifteenth century this cry was the 
 cry of insurgent multitudes and the prelude, sanctified by 
 martyrdom, of the religious reform. A holy man, John 
 Huss of Bohemia, leader of this movement, perished in 
 the flames kindled by the Inquisition. Most of you to- 
 day are ignorant of the history of these old struggles, or 
 think they were only fanatical struggles over purely theo- 
 logical questions. But when history, popularised by 
 National Education, has taught you that every step 
 forward in religious thought brings a corresponding 
 progress in civil life, you will understand the true 
 value of these conflicts, and honour the memory of these 
 martyrs as your benefactors. 
 
 We owe to them and to the martyrs who preceded 
 them our knowledge to-day that there is no privileged 
 class between God and man ; that the best among us in
 
 92 The Duties of Man 
 
 virtue and in knowledge of divine and human things 
 may and ought to counsel and direct us on the right 
 path, but without a monopoly of power or any class 
 supremacy ; and that the right of communion is equal 
 for all. What is holy in heaven is holy on earth. And 
 the communion of men in God brings as its consequence 
 the association of men in the earthly life. From the 
 religious association of souls springs the right of associa- 
 tion in the faculties and works which convert thought 
 into reality. 
 
 Consider Association, then, as your duty and your right. 
 
 Some who would limit the citizen's right to association 
 will tell you that the true association is the State, the 
 Nation ; that you are and ought to be all members of it, 
 and that therefore any partial association between you is 
 either adverse to the State, or superfluous. 
 
 But the State, the Nation, only represents the associa- 
 tion of the citizens in those things and those aims which 
 are common to all the men who compose it. There 
 exist aims and ends which do not embrace all the 
 citizens, but only a certain number of them. And as 
 the aims and ends common to all constitute the Nation, 
 so the aims and ends common to some of the citizens 
 ought to constitute the special association. 
 
 Moreover — and this is the fundamental basis of the 
 right of association — association is the guarantee of 
 Progress. The State represents a certain sum and set 
 of principles in which the universal body of citizens are 
 agreed at the time of its foundation. Suppose that a 
 new and true principle, a new and reasonable develop- 
 ment of the truths which give life to the State, is 
 revealed to some of the citizens ; how can they spread 
 the knowledge of it without association ? Suppose that 
 in consequence of scientific discoveries, of new com- 
 munications opened between one people and another, or 
 from some other cause, a new interest becomes apparent 
 to a certain number of men belonging to the State ; how 
 can those who are first aware of it make a place for it 
 among the long-existing interests, except by uniting 
 their individual means and strength ? Inertia and con-
 
 The Duties of Man 93 
 
 tent with the condition of things already existing and 
 sanctioned by the common consent of mankind are 
 habits of mind too natural in men to allow a single 
 individual to shake them and overcome them. But the 
 association of a minority which grows every day can do 
 it. Association is the method of the future. Without 
 it the State would remain stationary, enchained to the 
 degree of civilisation already reached. 
 
 The object of association should be progressive, not 
 contrary to the truths established for ever by the 
 universal agreement of Humanity and of the Nation. An 
 association instituted for the purpose of facilitating the 
 robbery of other people's property, an association which 
 makes polygamy obligatory on its members, an associa- 
 tion which preaches the dissolution of the Nation or 
 the establishment of Despotism, would be illegal. The 
 Nation has a right to say to its members : " We cannot 
 tolerate the spread of doctrines in our midst which 
 violate that which constitutes human nature, Morality, 
 or the Country. Go forth and establish among your- 
 selves, beyond our confines, the association which your 
 tendencies suggest. 
 
 Association must be peaceful. It ought to have no 
 other arms than the written or spoken Word. Its 
 purpose must be to persuade, not to compel. 
 
 Association must be public. Secret associations are 
 weapons of lawful warfare when Liberty and Country do 
 not exist, but are unlawful and may be dissolved by the 
 Nation when Liberty is a recognised right and the 
 Country protects the development and inviolability of 
 thought. Even as association ought to open the way 
 to Progress, so it ought also to be subject to the 
 examination and judgment of all. 
 
 And finally association must respect in others the 
 rights which spring from the essential conditions of 
 human nature. An association which, like the mediaeval 
 corporations, should violate the liberty of labour, or 
 should tend directly to restrict liberty of conscience, 
 might justifiably be repressed by the Nation through its 
 government.
 
 94 The Duties of Man 
 
 Outside these limits liberty of association among 
 citizens is as sacred and inviolable as Progress, to which 
 it gives life. Any government which should attempt to 
 restrict it would betray its social mission ; it would be 
 the duty of the people, first to warn it, and, when all 
 pacific means had been exhausted, to overthrow it. 
 
 And these, O my Brothers, are the principal grounds 
 upon which your Duties are based, the sources from 
 which your Rights spring. An infinite number of special 
 questions may arise in your civil life ; but it is not the 
 scope of this work to foresee, or help you to solve, them. 
 The sole intention of my work is to point out to you the 
 principles which, like torches for your path, should guide 
 you in dealing with these questions, and which, if 
 sincerely applied, will always supply you with a means of 
 solving them. And this, I think, I have done. 
 
 I have pointed to God as the source and pledge of 
 equality among men ; to the moral law as the source of 
 every civil law, and the standard by which you must 
 judge the conduct of those who make the laws ; to the 
 people, to you, ourselves, the universal body of citizens 
 who form the nation, as the sole legitimate interpreter of 
 the law, and the source of all political power. 
 
 I have told you that the fundamental character of the 
 law is Progress ; progress unlimited and continuous from 
 age to age ; progress in every branch of human activity, 
 in every manifestation of thought, from religion down to 
 industry and the distribution of wealth. 
 
 I have pointed out to you what your duties are to 
 Humanity, to the Country, to the Family, and to your- 
 selves. And I have deduced these duties from the 
 characters which constitute the humaji creature, and 
 which you are under an obligation to develop. These 
 characters, inviolable in every man, are: liberty, 
 capability of education, social tendencies, capacity, and 
 the necessity of progressing. And from these essential 
 characters, without which a human being is neither a 
 man nor a citizen, I have deduced your duties, your 
 rights, and the general nature of the government which 
 you ought to seek for your country. Do not ever forget
 
 The Duties of Man 95 
 
 these principles. Keep watch so that they may never 
 be violated. Incarnate them in yourselves, and you will 
 be free and will progress. 
 
 The work which I have undertaken for you would, 
 then, be complete, if a tremendous obstacle to your 
 fulfilment of these duties and the exercise of these rights 
 did not arise out of the very heart of society as it is now 
 constituted ; namely, the inequality of means. 
 
 For the fulfilment of duties, and for the exercise of 
 rights, three things are necessary : time, intellectual 
 development, and an assured material existence. 
 
 Now, very many of you in the present day do not 
 possess these elements of progress. Their life is a 
 constant and uncertain struggle to gain the means of 
 sustaining material existence ; it is not a question for 
 them of progressing, but of livifig. 
 
 There exists, then, a profound and radical evil in 
 society as it is organised to-day. And my work would 
 be useless if I did not define this evil, and point out to 
 you the way to correct it. 
 
 The Economic question will therefore be the subject of 
 the final portion of my work.
 
 XI 
 
 THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 
 
 Many, too many of you, are poor. For three-fourths 
 at least of the men who belong to the working-classes, 
 w-hether agricultural or industrial, life is a daily struggle 
 to gain the means indispensable to existence. They 
 work with their hands ten, twelve, sometimes fourteen 
 hours a day, and yet by this assiduous, monotonous, 
 severe labour they barely earn the necessaries of physical 
 existence. To point out to them the duty of progress, 
 to speak to them of intellectual and moral life, of 
 political rights, of education, is, in the actual state of 
 society, sheer irony. They have neither the time nor 
 the means for progress. Worn out, exhausted, half- 
 stupefied by a life spent in a round of petty mechanical 
 toils, they learn in it a dumb, impotent, often unjust 
 rancour against the class of men who employ them ; 
 they seek forgetfulness of their present sufferings and 
 of the uncertainty of the morrow in the excitement of 
 strong drink, and lay themselves down to rest in places 
 more fitly described as dens than as rooms, to awake 
 next day to the same dull exercise of their physical 
 powers. 
 
 This is a terrible condition, and it must be altered. 
 
 You are men, and as such you have faculties, not only 
 physical, but intellectual and moral, which it is your 
 duty to develop ; you ought to be citizens, and as such 
 you ought to exercise for the general benefit rights which 
 demand a certain degree of education and a certain 
 amount of time. 
 
 96
 
 The Duties of Man 97 
 
 It is clear that you ought to work less and earn 7nore 
 than you do to-day. 
 
 We who are all sons of God and brothers in Him 
 one to another are called to form one single large 
 family. In this family there may exist inequalities 
 resulting from different aptitudes, different capacities, 
 inclination to different kinds of work. But one principle 
 ought to rule it. Whoever is willing to give for the good 
 of all that 7nuch of work of which he is capable ought 
 to obtain enough recompense to enable hi7n to develop his 
 own special life more or less in all the aspects which define 
 it as human. 
 
 This is the ideal which we ought to study how to 
 approach more nearly from century to century. Every 
 change, every revolution, which does not bring us one 
 step nearer to it, which does not achieve a social advance 
 in correspondence with the /t'/zV/Va/ advance, which does 
 not further by one degree the material improvement 
 of the poorer classes, violates God's design, and debases 
 itself to a war of factions, each seeking unlawful 
 dominion ; it is a lie and an evil. 
 
 But how far can we realise this ideal to-day ? And 
 how and by what means can we realise it ? 
 
 Some of your more timid friends have sought the 
 remedy in the morality of the working-man himself. 
 Founding savings-banks or other like institutions, they 
 have said to the working-men ; Bring your wages here ; 
 save ; abstaifi from all excess in drink and other 
 things ; free yourselves from want by self-denial. And 
 these are excellent counsels, since they seek the moral 
 reform of the working-man, without which all reforms 
 would be useless. But they do not solve the question 
 of poverty, nor do they take any account of social duty. 
 Very few of you can save anything out of your wages. 
 And those very few can only by slow and patient 
 accumulation provide in part for their old age. But 
 economic reform must have in view provision for the 
 period of manhood, for the development and full ex- 
 pansion of life when it is active and strong and can 
 help efficaciously towards the progress of the Country
 
 98 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 and of Humanity. With regard to material welfare, the 
 question is how to increase wealth and production ; and 
 the counsels of which I have spoken do not indicate 
 how this is to be done either. Moreover society, which 
 lives by the labour of the sons of the people and 
 demands of them a tribute of blood whenever danger 
 threatens it, has a sacred debt towards them. Other 
 thinkers there are, not enemies of the people, but only 
 indifferent to them and to the cry of suffering which 
 rises from the hearts of the men of labour, and fearful 
 of any important innovation. These, attached to a so- 
 called school of economists who fought meritoriously and 
 successfully all the battles for liberty of industry, but 
 without taking into consideration the necessity oiprogress 
 and of association as inseparable from human nature, 
 maintained, and still maintain, like the philanthropists 
 of whom I have just spoken, that every one can, even 
 in actual conditions, build up his own independence 
 by his own activity. They declare that any change 
 in the system of labour would turn out superfluous 
 or harmful, and that the formula Every one for himself 
 and liberty for all is sufficient to create little by little 
 an approximate equilibrium of ease and comfort among 
 the classes that constitute society. Freedom of internal 
 trade, freedom of commerce among the nations, a gradual 
 reduction of custom duties, especially upon raw materials, 
 general encouragement given to great industrial enter- 
 prises, to the multiplication of ways of communication 
 and to all machinery that increases production — this 
 is as much as society can do according to the econo- 
 mists ; any further intervention on its part would be, 
 according to them, a source of evil. 
 
 If they were right the disease of poverty would be 
 incurable ; and God forbid, O my Brothers, that I 
 should ever be persuaded to agree with them, and fling 
 as an answer to your sufferings and your aspirations 
 this despairing, atheistical, immoral conclusion. God 
 has decreed for you a better future than that contained 
 in the remedies of the economists. 
 
 These remedies only aim, in fact, at a possible and
 
 The Duties of Man 99 
 
 temporary increase in the production of wealth, not at 
 its more equal distribution. \Vhile the philanthropists 
 contemplate the itiatt alone, and endeavour to make 
 him more moral without troubling themselves to increase 
 the general wealth by giving him any opportunity of 
 improving his material conditions, the economists think 
 only of increasing the sources of production without 
 concerning themselves about the inan. Under the 
 exclusive regime of liberty which they preach, and which 
 has more or less regulated the economic world in the 
 times nearest to us, the most unimpeachable documentary 
 evidence shows us an increase of productive activity 
 and of capital, but not of universally diffused prosperity. 
 The poverty of the working-classes remains unchanged. 
 Freedom of competition for those who possess nothing, 
 for those who are unable to save anything from their 
 daily wages, and therefore have nothing with which to 
 start any commercial undertaking, is a lie, just as political 
 freedom is a lie for those who from want of education, 
 instruction, opportunities, and time cannot exercise its 
 rights. Increased facilities of trade, improvements in 
 the means of distribution and exchange, might little by 
 little emancipate labour from the commercial tyranny 
 of the intermediate class between the producer and 
 consumer ; but cannot avail to emancipate it from the 
 tyranny of capital, or give the means of labour to those 
 who lack them. And for want of an equal distribution 
 of wealth, a juster division of products, and a progressive 
 increase in the number of consumers, capital itself is 
 diverted from its true economic purpose, and remains 
 in part stationary in the hands of a few instead of 
 spreading itself wholly in circulation. It is used for 
 the production of superfluous objects and luxuries, and 
 for the satisfaction of fictitious needs, instead of being 
 concentrated on the production of objects of first 
 necessity for existence, and is risked in perilous and 
 often immoral speculations. 
 
 In the present day capital — and this is the curse of 
 our actual economic society — is the despot of labour. 
 The three classes which to-day form society in its
 
 loo The Duties of Man 
 
 economic sense are — capitalists, that is, the possessors 
 of the means and implements of labour, namely, lands, 
 factories, ready money, and raw material ; contractors, 
 that is, the heads and initiators of labour, commercial 
 men, who represent or ought to represent intellect ; and 
 7vorking-!)ien, who represent manual labour. Of these 
 the first class only is master of the field ; it is his to 
 promote, delay, or accelerate the labour at will, and to 
 direct it towards certain ends. And his share in the 
 profits of the work and the value of the production is 
 comparatively determined ; the location of the instru- 
 ments of labour does not vary except within known and 
 narrow limits ; and time up to a certain point at least 
 is his since he is not under the domination of absolute 
 want. The share of the second is uncertain ; it is 
 dependent on their intellect and activity, but particularly 
 on circumstances, on the greater and less development 
 of competition, and on the flow and ebb of capital in 
 consequence of events out of the reach of calculation. 
 The share of the last class, the working-i?ien, is a wage 
 determined before the work is done, and without regard 
 to the greater and lesser profits which result from the 
 enterprise ; and the limits within which the wage varies 
 are determined by the relation which exists between 
 the labour offered and the labour required — in other 
 words, between the working population and the capital. 
 Now, as the former tends to increase, and to an extent 
 which generally surpasses, even if by only a little, the 
 increase of the latter, wages tend, where other causes 
 do not intervene, to decrease. And time is not in the 
 hands of the working-man. Financial and political 
 crises, the sudden application of new machinery to 
 different branches of industrial activity, irregularities 
 in production, and its frequent excessive accumulation 
 in a single direction — an evil inseparable from a short- 
 sighted competition — the unequal distribution of the 
 labouring population on certain points and in certain 
 branches of activity, and many other causes disturbing 
 to labour deprive the working-man of the free choice 
 of his conditions. His alternatives are absolute want,
 
 The Duties of Man loi 
 
 or the acceptance of any terms which may be offered 
 to him. 
 
 Such a state of things, I repeat, contains the germs 
 of a malady which must be cured. But the remedies 
 proposed by the econoj?nsts axQ ineffectual for this purpose. 
 
 And nevertheless, there is a progress in the condition 
 of the classes to which you belong ; an historical, 
 continuous progress, which has overcome very different 
 obstacles. You were once slaves ; then you were serfs ; 
 now you are wage-earners. You have freed yourselves 
 from slavery, from serfdom ; why should you not free 
 yourselves from the yoke of ivages, and become free 
 producers, master of the whole value of what you 
 produce ? ^Vhy should you not by your own doing and 
 the assistance of society, which has sacred duties towards 
 its members, peacefully accomplish the greatest and most 
 beautiful revolution that can be conceived — a revolution 
 which should make labour the economic basis of human 
 fellowship, the fruits of labour the basis of property, and 
 should thus gather together under one single law of 
 equilibrium between production and consumption, with- 
 out distinction of classes, and without the tyrannic 
 predominance of one of the elements of labour over 
 another, all the children of our common Mother, our 
 Country? 
 
 II 
 
 A sense of social duty towards the working-classes, 
 such as I have been pointing out, had been slowly grow- 
 ing in men's minds — thanks chiefly to the republican 
 propaganda — and thus insuring the popular revolution 
 of the future, when in the last thirty years certain 
 schools of thinkers arose, in France especially, mostly 
 good men and friends of the people, but carried away 
 by an excessive love of system and by individual vanity. 
 Under the name of socialism these men introduced 
 exclusive and exaggerated doctrines, often antagonistic 
 to the wealth already gained by other classes, and 
 economically impossible. By terrifying the masses of 
 the lower middle-class, and producing distrust between
 
 I02 The Duties of Man 
 
 the different orders of citizens, they threw the social 
 question into the background and spht up the republican 
 camp in two. In France the first effect of this distrust 
 and terror was a more easy triumph for the coup detat. 
 
 I cannot now examine one by one with you ,these 
 different systems, which were called Sansimopism, 
 Fourierism, Communism, or some other name. Founded 
 almost all of them upon ideas good in themselvef and 
 accepted by all who belong to the Faith of Progress, their 
 promulgators spoiled or frustrated them by the false or 
 tyrannic methods by which they proposed to apply them. 
 And it is necessary that I should briefly point out to you 
 in what their errors consisted, because the promises held 
 out to the people by these systems are so dazzling that 
 they might easily allure you, and you would run a risk 
 by embracing them of retarding that future emancipation 
 which you will certainly obtain, and before long. It is 
 true — and this should be enough to awaken a strong doubt 
 in your minds — that when circumstances called any of these 
 men to power they did not even attempt a practical 
 application of their own doctrines ; giants of audacity 
 in their writings, they retreated when confronted by the 
 reality of things. 
 
 If you examine these systems attentively some day 
 and remember the fundamental ideas which I have been 
 pointing out to you, and the characters inseparable from 
 human nature, you will find that they all violate the Law 
 of Progress, the manner in which this is fulfilled in 
 humanity, and one or other of the faculties which form 
 the Man. 
 
 Progress is accomplished step by step, through 
 laws which no human power can break, by development^ 
 by the perpetual modification of the elements which 
 manifest the activity of life. Men have often in certain 
 epochs, in certain countries, and under the influence of 
 certain prejudices and certain errors, given the name of 
 elements, of conditions of social life, to things which 
 have no root in nature, but only in the conventions and 
 customs of a mistaken society, and which disappear after 
 that particular epoch or beyond the boundaries of those
 
 The Duties of Man lo;^ 
 
 particular countries. But you can discover what are 
 the true elements inseparable from human nature, by 
 interrogating — as I told you elsewhere — the instincts of 
 your souls and then testing by the traditions of all ages- 
 and of all countries these instincts of yours, whether they 
 be such as have been always the instincts of Humanity. 
 And those things which an inborn voice (and the great voice 
 of Humanity) indicates as constituent elements of life have 
 to be modified, and developed continuously from epoch 
 to epoch, but can never be abolished. 
 
 Among these elements of human life, besides religion, 
 liberty, association and others mentioned in the course of 
 this work, property is also one. 
 
 The. princif'le, the origin, of property is rooted in human, 
 nature itself, and represents the necessities of that material 
 life which it is the duty of the individual to maintain. 
 As by means of religion, science, liberty, the individual 
 is called to transform, to improve, and to govern the 
 moral and ititellectiml world, so also he is called to 
 transform, to improve, and to govern the physical v;qx\6:. 
 by means of material labour. And property is the 
 toketi of the fulfilment of that mission and represents the 
 amount of work by which the individual has transformed, 
 developed, and increased the productive forces of 
 nature. 
 
 Property is therefore eternal in \is principle, and you find.; 
 it existing and protected throughout the whole existence 
 of Humanity. But the methods by which property is 
 governed are subject to change, and destined, like every 
 other manifestation of human life, to obey the law of 
 Progress. Those who, finding property already estab- 
 lished in a particular form, declare that form to be- 
 inviolable and oppose all attempts to transform it, deny 
 Progress itself j one need only open two volumes of 
 history dealing with two different epochs, to find in both 
 a change in the constitution of property. And those 
 who, because they find it badly constituted at a certain 
 epoch, declare that it must be abolished, and wiped out 
 of the social system, deny an element of human nature ;. 
 and could they ever have their way they would only
 
 ;io4 The Duties of Man 
 
 ^succeed in retarding Progress by mutilating Life. Pro- 
 perty would inevitably reappear a short time after and 
 probably in the same form which it had at the time of 
 -'its abolition. 
 
 Property is badly constituted at the present day 
 because its actual distribution originated, generally 
 •speaking, in conquest ; in the violence by which in 
 remote times certain invading peoples possessed them- 
 selves of lands and fruits of labour not their own. 
 Property is badly constituted because the basis of the 
 division between proprietor and workmen of the fruits 
 'Of a work accomplished by both together does not rest 
 upon a just and equal rate, proportioned to the work 
 itself. Property is badly constituted because by con- 
 ferring on those who possess it political and legislative 
 rights which are denied to the working-men, it tends to 
 be the monopoly of a few and inaccessible to the greater 
 number. Property is badly constituted because the 
 system of taxation is badly constituted and tends to 
 maintain a privilege of wealth in the proprietor, while 
 oppressing the poorer classes and depriving them of 
 every possibility of saving. But if, instead of correcting 
 evils and slowly modifying the constitution of property, 
 you sought to abolish it, you would suppress a source of 
 wealth, of emulation, and of activity, and you would be 
 ilike the savage who to gather the fruit cuts down the tree. 
 
 It is not necessary to abolish property because only a 
 feiv possess it now ; but the way must be opened for the 
 many to acquire it. 
 
 \Sq, must go back to the principle which makes it 
 legitimate, and so arrange that labour alone shall be able 
 :to produce it. 
 
 Society must be directed towards a more equable 
 'basis of remuneration between the proprietor or capitalist 
 and the working-man. 
 
 The system of taxation must be altered, so that it 
 shall not touch incomes which only suffice for existence 
 and shall leave the poor man the power of accumulating 
 savings and of thus gradually acquiring property. And to 
 tiring this to pass, the privileges conceded to property
 
 The Duties of Man 105 
 
 must be suppressed and all must be allowed to con- 
 tribute to the work of legislation. 
 
 Now, all these things are possible and just. By edu- 
 cating yourselves and organising yourselves to demand 
 them insistently and to resolve to have them, you could 
 obtain them ; but by seeking the abolition of property 
 you would seek an impossibility, you would do an in- 
 justice to those who have gained it by their own labour, 
 and you would diminish production instead of increas- 
 
 ing It. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The abolition of individual property is nevertheless 
 the remedy proposed by many of the socialistic systems 
 of which I am speaking, and especially by Communism. 
 Others go further ; and tinding the religious conception, 
 the conception of government, and the conception of 
 country falsified by religious errors, by class privilege, 
 and by the egoism of dynasties, they demand the aboli- 
 tion of all religion, all government, and all nationality. 
 This is the proceeding of children or of barbarians. 
 Would it not be as reasonable, since maladies are often 
 engendered by corrupt air, to seek the suppression of 
 every respirable gas ? 
 
 But you need no confutation from me of the error of 
 those who in the name of liberty wish to found anarchy 
 and to abolish society so as to leave only the individual 
 and his rights. My whole work is directed against that 
 wicked dream, which denies progress, duties, human 
 brotherhood, the solidarity of nations, everything that 
 you and I venerate. But the design of those who, con- 
 fining themselves to the economic question, demand the 
 abolition of individual property and the establishment of 
 communism, touches the opposite extreme, denies the 
 individual^ denies liberty, closes the way to progress, and, 
 so to speak, petrifies society. 
 
 The general formula of communism is as follows : the 
 possession of all the means of production, that is, lands, 
 capital, machinery, and all instruments of labour, etc., 
 shall be concentrated in the State ; the State shall assign
 
 io6 The Duties of Man 
 
 his share of work to each, and shall adjust the recom- 
 pense, some say, with absolute equality, and others say 
 in proportion to his needs. Such an existence, were it 
 possible, would be a life of beavers, not of men. The 
 liberty, the dignity, the conscience of the individual 
 would all disappear in an organisation of productive 
 machines. Physical life might be satisfied by it, but 
 moral and intellectual life would perish, and with it 
 emulation, free choice of work, free association, stimulus 
 to production, joys of property, and all incentives to 
 progress. Under such a system the human family 
 would become a herd needing nothing more than to be 
 led to a sufficient pasture. Which of you would resign 
 himself to such a system ? 
 
 Equality is thus secured, they say. How ? 
 
 Equality in the distribution of labour ? It is impos- 
 sible. Work is of different kinds, and cannot be 
 reckoned by its duration or by the amount performed 
 in an hour ; but by the difficulty, by the lesser or greater 
 unpleasantness of the work, by the expenditure of 
 vitality which it involves, by the benefit which it confers 
 on society. How can you reckon the equality between 
 an hour passed in a coal mine, or in purifying the 
 corrupt water of a marsh, and an hour spent in a spin- 
 ning factory ? The impossibility of such a calculation 
 has suggested to some of the founders of these systems 
 the idea of making every one perform in turn a certain 
 amount of labour in every branch of useful industry ; 
 an absurd remedy which would make good production 
 impossible, while it could not succeed in suppressing 
 the inequality between the weak and the strong, between 
 the man of intellectual capacity and one slow of intellect, 
 between the man of lymphatic temperament and the man 
 of nervous temperament. Work easy and agreeable to 
 one is laborious and difficult to another. 
 
 Equality in the distribution of products ? It is impos- 
 sible. Either equality would have to be absolute and 
 would constitute an immense injustice, as it would not 
 distinguish between the different needs resulting from 
 difference of organism, nor between the powers and
 
 The Duties of Man 107 
 
 capacities acquired from a sense of duty, and those 
 received, witliout any merit, from nature. Or else the 
 inequality must be relative and calculated according to 
 different needs ; and not taking account of individual 
 production, it would violate those rights of property 
 which ought to belong to the labourer as the fruit of 
 his labour. 
 
 Then who would be the judge to decide upon the 
 needs of every individual ? The State ? 
 
 Working-men, my Brothers, are you disposed to accept 
 a hierarchy of lords and masters of the common property 
 — masters of the mind in consequence of an exclusive 
 education, masters of the body from possessing the 
 power of determining your work, your capacity, and 
 your needs ? Is not this a return to ancient slavery ? 
 Would not these masters, representing such great 
 interests, be carried away by the theory of interests 
 and be seduced by the immense power concentrated 
 in their hands into founding again the hereditary 
 dictatorship of the ancient castes ? 
 
 No ; communism would not produce equality among 
 the men of labour ; it would not increase production — 
 which is the great necessity of the present day — because 
 as soon as the means of life are secured human nature 
 — in the average man at least — is satisfied and the 
 incentive to an increase of production, to be diffused 
 among all the members of society, becomes so small 
 that it is not enough to stimulate his faculties \ ^ pro- 
 duction would not be improved ; there would be no 
 incitement to progress in invention ; nor could progress 
 ever be assisted by the uncertain and unintelligent 
 collective direction of the general organisation. For 
 the evils which aiiflict the sons of the people the only 
 remedy of Communism is protection from hunger. Now,, 
 cannoc this be done, cannot the working-man's right 
 to life and to work be secured without upsetting the 
 
 ' It has been calculated that if, in a hundred thousand workmen, one 
 workman should produce a hundred francs' worth in the year more than 
 the average production, he would receive for himsell a thousandth part 
 of a franc everj' year, three centimes every thirty years. Who can call this 
 a spur to production ?
 
 io8 The Duties of Man 
 
 whole social order, without rendering production sterile, 
 impeding progress, abolishing the liberty of the indivi- 
 dual, and chaining him down in a tyrannic organisation ? 
 
 IV 
 
 The remedy for your present condition cannot be found 
 in any arbitrary general organisation built up according 
 to the plan of some particular mind, contradicting the 
 universally adopted bases of civil existence and 
 established all at once by means of decrees. We are 
 not here below to create Humanity, but to continue it ; 
 we can and we must modify its constituent elements and 
 order them better, but we cannot suppress them. 
 Humanity rebels and always will rebel against any such 
 attempt. Time spent over these illusions would there- 
 fore be time wasted. Nor can the remedy be found in 
 an increase of wages imposed by the governing authority 
 without other changes which would increase capital. An 
 increase in the money spent on wages — that is, an in- 
 crease in the cost of production — would involve a rise in 
 the price of products, a diminution of consumption, and 
 consequently less employment for the working-man. 
 
 It is not to be found in anything that would annul 
 liberty — consecration of labour and spur to effort ; nor in 
 anything which would diminish capital — instrument of 
 labour and of production. 
 
 The remedy for your present condition is the union of 
 capital and labour ifi the same hands. 
 
 When Society shall recognise no distinction beyond 
 that oi producers and consumers, or rather when every 
 man shall be a producer and a consumer — when the entire 
 fruits of labour, instead of being distributed between that 
 series of middle-men who, beginning with the capitalist 
 and descending to the retail seller, often heighten the 
 price of the product 50 per cent., shall be retained by 
 labour — the permanetit causes of poverty will disappear 
 from your midst. Your future lies in your emancipation 
 from the exactions of capital, arbiter to-day of a produc- 
 tion in which it has no actual share.
 
 The Duties of Man 109 
 
 I speak of your material and moral future. Look 
 round you. Wherever you find capital and labour 
 united in the same hands — wherever the profits of labour 
 are divided between all who labour, in proportion to the 
 increase of those profits and to the amount by which 
 each workman has helped in the collective work— you find 
 a decrease of poverty and at the same time an increase of 
 morality. In the Canton of Zurich, in the Engadine, and 
 in many other parts of Switzerland where the peasant is 
 the proprietor, and land, capital, and labour are united in 
 the same individual — in Norway, in Flanders, in Eastern 
 Frisia, in Holstein in the German Palatinate, in Belgium, 
 in the Island of Guernsey on the English coast — there 
 may be seen a prosperity comparatively superior to that 
 of all the other parts of Europe where the land does not 
 belong to the cultivator. A race of husbandmen noted 
 for honesty, dignity, and independence, and for their frank 
 and sincere manners, people these countries. The habits 
 of the miners of Cornwall in England and of the American 
 whalers who trade with China, among whom participation 
 in the profits of the enterprise obtains, are recognised by 
 official documents to be better than those of workers 
 subject to the system of payment by a predetermined rate 
 of wages. 
 
 Association of labour, division of the profits of labour — ■ 
 that is, of the profits resulting from the sale of the 
 products — among the labourers, in proportion to the 
 amount and the value of the work accomplished : this is 
 the social future. In this is contained the secret of your 
 emancipation. You were slaves once ; then serfs ; then 
 wage-earners ; before long you shall be, if you will it, free 
 producers and brothers in Association. 
 
 Association, free and voluntary, and organised on 
 certain bases by yourselves, among men who know, love, 
 and esteem one another; not compulsory association^ 
 imposed by the governing authority and ordered without 
 regard for individual affections and ties, and treating men 
 as so many machines for production, rather than as beings, 
 of free and spontaneous will. 
 
 Association administered in a spirit of republican
 
 no The Duties of Man 
 
 brotherhood by your own delegates and from which you 
 shall be able to withdraw yourselves if you wish ; not 
 subject to the despotism of the State and of a hierarchy 
 arbitrarily constituted and ignorant of your needs and 
 aptitudes. 
 
 Association of groups formed according to your own 
 tendencies, not, as the authors of the systems to which I 
 have called your attention would have, of all the men 
 belonging to a given branch of industrial or agricultural 
 activity. 
 
 The concentration of all the individuals in the 
 State, or even in a single city, engaged in the same 
 craft, in one single productive society, would lead 
 again to the old tyrannical monopoly of the Corpora- 
 tions. It would make the producer arbiter of prices 
 to the injury of the consumer, would give a legal 
 form to the oppression of minorities, would deprive 
 a dissatisfied workman of every possibility of getting 
 work, and would suppress the necessity of progress 
 by extinguishing all rivalry in work, all stimulus to 
 invention. 
 
 Association has been attempted in the last twenty 
 years, first timidly and in unfavourable circumstances 
 in France, then in England and in Belgium, and has 
 been crowned with success wherever it was undertaken 
 with energy, resolve, and the spirit of self-sacrifice. It 
 contains the secret of an entire social transformation, 
 a transformation which, in virtue of your traditions and 
 of the initiative in social progress which you have always 
 possessed, should be accomplished first in Italy. And 
 this transformation, emancipating you from the slavery 
 of wages, would at the same time give new life to 
 production, to the advantage of all classes, and would 
 improve the economic condition of the country. Under 
 the present system the aim of the capitalist is usually 
 to amass as much wealth as he can in order to retire 
 from the arena of work ; under the system of association 
 you would tend instead to secure the continuity of work, 
 that is, of production. At present the head, the director 
 of the work, who owes his fortune not to any special
 
 The Duties of Man 1 1 1 
 
 aptitude, but to his possession of capital, is often im- 
 provident, rash, or incapable; an association directed 
 by delegates, watched over by all its members, would 
 not run any risks from such defects. To-day labour is 
 often directed towards the production of superfluities, 
 not necessaries; in consequence of capricious and unjust 
 inequality in the payment workers abound in one branch 
 of activity and are wanting in another ; the working-man 
 limited to a fixed wage has no motive for devoting to 
 his work all the zeal of which he is capable and all 
 the activity with which he might increase or improve 
 his output. Association, it is evident, would remedy this 
 and other causes of irregularity and of inferiority in 
 production. 
 
 Liberty to withdraw oneself, without doing harm to 
 the association ; equality of all members in the election 
 of an executive appointed for a given time — or better, 
 subject to removal ; freedom of admission, subsequently 
 to the foundation of the association, without the obli- 
 gation of putting in capital, but with permission to 
 supply it, for the good of the common fund, by a 
 deduction from the profits of the first years ; indivisibility 
 and perpetuity of the collective capital; remuneration for 
 all, equal to the necessities of life ; distribution of the 
 tools and instruments of labour, according to the 
 quantity and quality of each one's work, — these are 
 the general principles upon which you must found your 
 associations if you are willing to do a work involving 
 present sacrifice but future gain for the class to which 
 you belong. Each of these principles, that especially 
 which concerns the perpetuity of collective capital — the 
 pledge of your emancipation and your link with future 
 generations — needs a chapter to itself. But a special 
 study of working-men's associations does not enter into 
 the plan of my present work. Perhaps if God allows 
 me yet a few years of life I shall do it separately, out 
 of my love for you. Meanwhile be sure that these 
 rules which I have laid down for you here are the 
 fruit of deep and earnest study, and deserve your 
 attentive consideration.
 
 112 The Duties of Man 
 
 But the capital ? The capital with which to start the 
 association ; where is it to come from ? 
 
 This is a grave question ; and I cannot treat of it here as 
 I should wish. But I will point out to you briefly your 
 own duty and the duty of others. 
 
 The primary source of that capital must be in your- 
 selves, in your savings, in your spirit of self-sacrifice. 
 I know the position of most of you ; but to some the 
 good fortune of regular or better-paid employment 
 affords the possibility of collecting, by the careful 
 economy of eighteen or twenty combined together, the 
 small sum sufficient for starting the work on your own 
 account. And the consciousness of fulfilling a solemn 
 duty and of deserving your desired emancipation ought 
 to sustain you in this economy. I could tell you of 
 industrial associations, now financially powerful, which 
 were started here in England by the payment of a penny 
 a day by a certain number of working-men. I could 
 repeat to you many stories of sacrifice heroically endured 
 in France and elsewhere by bands of working-men, who 
 are now possessors of considerable capital.^ There is 
 scarcely any difficulty which a firm will, sustained by the 
 
 ' In the year 1848 the delegates of some hundreds of working-men who 
 had united for the purpose of founding an Association for the manufacture 
 of pianofortes were led by the want of the large capital necessary for the 
 undertaking to ask the Government for a subvention of 300,000 francs. 
 The Government Commission refused to grant it. The Association broke 
 up, but fourteen of the working-men decided to defy every obstacle and 
 to re-establish it by their own unaided efforts. They had neither 
 money nor credit ; they had faith. 
 
 A few of them brought to the new Society materials and tools to the 
 value of about 2,000 francs. But a floatingcapital was indispensable. Each 
 of the associates contributed, not without difficulty, ten francs. A few 
 working-men who had no direct interest in the Society added their small 
 offerings to this slender capital. And on March 10, 1894, the sum of 229 
 francs and 50 centimes having been collected, the Association was declared 
 constituted. 
 
 This common fund was barely sufficient for the start, and for the small 
 daily expenses indispensable to a manufacturing business. Nothing re- 
 mained for wages, and more than two months passed without the workers 
 receiving a single halfpenny of pay. How did they live during this critic.1l 
 time? As working-men do live during interruptions of work, helped by 
 the working-man who is fortunate enough to have work— selling, pawning 
 one by one their household goods and utensils. 
 
 Some work having been executed, the price was paid on May 4, 1849. 
 That day was for the Association what a victory is at the beginning of a 
 war ; and they celebrated it. When the debts had been paid, and the 
 money owed them collected, there remained for every member the sum of 
 6 francs and 61 centimes. It was agreed that each should keep 5 francs as 
 wages and devote the rest to a fraternal dinner. The fourteen members,
 
 The Duties of Man 113 
 
 consciousness of doing good, may not overcome. Each 
 of you might contribute by means of your savings a 
 httle something to the small primary fund, in money or 
 in material or in implements. You might be able, if 
 your conduct were such as to win confidence and 
 esteem, to collect small loans from relations or fellow 
 workmen, who would become merely shareholders in the 
 association, and would not receive interest on their loans 
 except on the profits of the enterprise. In many of your 
 industries, in which the price of the raw material is very 
 little, the capital required to start work independently is 
 inconsiderable. If you are determined to get it you will 
 find a way. And it will be better for you if the forma- 
 tion of this small capital is all your own, gained by the 
 sweat of your brow, or through the credit which you 
 have acquired by working well. As those nations best 
 preserve freedom who have conquered it with their blood, 
 so your associations will draw a larger and steadier 
 profit from the capital collected by long hours of work 
 and by economy than from that derived from any other 
 source. This is the nature of things. The Working-men's 
 
 most of whom had not tasted wine for a year, met tog^ether with their 
 families at a common feast, the cost of which was \i,d. per family. 
 
 For a whole month yet, the wages were not more than 5 francs a week. 
 In June a baker, a music-lover or speculator, proposed to buy a piano and 
 pay for it in bread. The proposal was accepted and the price agreed on at 
 the rate of 480 francs. This was good fortune for the Association, which 
 was now sure of having at least the first necessary of life. The value of 
 the bread was not calculated in the wages. Each had as much as he wanted, 
 and for the married ones as much as their families needed. 
 
 Little by little the Association, composed of very capable workmen, over- 
 came all the obstacles and privations which it had had to encounter in the first 
 period. Its books present the best testimony of the progress made For 
 the month of August, 1849, ^^ weekly earnings of each man rose to 10, 15, 
 20 francs, and this sum did not represent the whole profits ; every member 
 paid into the common fund a larger sum than he kept. 
 
 The books of the Society on December 30, 1850, gave the following 
 results. There were 32 members at this time. The establishment paid a 
 rent of 2,000 francs, and the premises were already too small for the work. 
 
 Value of tools and plant, 5,922 francs 60 cents. 
 
 Goods and raw material, 22,972 francs 28 cents. 
 
 In hand, notes for 3,540 francs. 
 
 Outstanding credits, nearly all good, 5,861 francs 90 cents. 
 
 The balance therefore was 39,317 francs 88 cents. Out of this the Society 
 only owed 4,737 francs 80 cents to a few creditors, and 1,650 francs to eighty 
 friendly working-men of the same trade who had made loans to the 
 Association in the first period. Actual balance, 32,950 francs 2 cents. 
 
 The Association has continued to flourish ever since.
 
 114 The Duties of Man 
 
 Associations, founded in Paris in 1848 with the aid of 
 Government subsidies, prospered very much less than 
 those which formed their original capital by their own 
 sacrifices. 
 
 But although I counsel you to self-sacrifice because I 
 love you truly and do not with servile adulation flatter or 
 make light of any possible weaknesses in you, that does 
 not lessen the duty of others. The men whom circum- 
 stances have provided with wealth must understand 
 this ; they must understand that emancipation is a part 
 of the Providential Design, and that it will be inevitably 
 accomplished, either with them or against them. Many 
 of these men, and especially those of republican faith, do 
 understand this ; and among these, if you give them 
 proofs of determined will and honest intelligence, you 
 will find help in your enterprises. They can — and as 
 soon as they perceive that the desire for association is 
 not the caprice of an hour, but the faith of a majority 
 among you, they will — give you facilities for obtaining 
 credit, either by advances, or by founding banks which 
 will give credit on the security of the future work of a 
 collective body of working-men, or perhaps by admitting 
 you to a share in the profits of their undertakings, an 
 intermediate stage between the present and the future 
 by which you might be able to obtain the small amount 
 of capital necessary for an independent association. In 
 Belgium more than elsewhere institutions such as I 
 have described already exist under the name of Banks of 
 Anticipation^ or of People's Banks. In Scotland many 
 banks will give credit to any man of known probity who 
 pledges his honour and offers as his security another 
 man of equally proved honesty. And the admission of 
 the workmen to a share in the profits is a plan adopted 
 with singular success by several employers.
 
 XII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 But the State, the Government — an institution legiti- 
 mate only when founded upon a mission of education 
 and of progress not yet understood — has a solemn debt 
 towards you, a debt which it will easily fulfil if ever there 
 is a really National Government, the Government of a free 
 and united People. The Government will then be able 
 to bestow assistance of many kinds upon the People, which 
 will solve the social problem without spoliation, without 
 violence, without laying hands on the wealth previously 
 acquired by the citizens, without rousing that antagonism 
 between class and class which is unjust, immoral, and 
 fatal to the nation and which visibly retards the progress 
 of the French in the present day. 
 
 Powerful assistance might be given in the following 
 ways : — 
 
 The exercise of moral influence in favour of the 
 associations by the publicly manifested approval of the 
 Government agents, by frequent discussion of their 
 fundamental principle in the Representative Assembly, 
 and by legislation granted to all voluntary associations 
 formed upon the basis described above. 
 
 Improvement in ways of communication and abolition 
 of whatever now hinders the free transport of produce. 
 
 The institution of public storehouses and depots, which 
 when the approximate value of the consigned goods had 
 been ascertained would grant to the associations a document 
 or bond similar to a bank bill and admissible for circu- 
 lation and discount, so as to make it possible for the 
 association to continue its work without being strangled 
 by the necessity of an immediate sale at any price.
 
 ii6 The Duties of Man 
 
 The concession of public works to the associations upon 
 the same terms as those granted to individual enter- 
 prise. 
 
 Simplification of judicial forms, which in the present 
 day are ruinous and often inaccessible to the poor man. 
 
 Legislative facilities granted for the sale and transfer of 
 landed property. 
 
 A radical change in the system of taxation by the 
 substitution of a single tax on incomes for the present 
 complicated and costly system of direct and indirect 
 taxation. And sanction given to the principle that 
 life is sacred; and that since without life neither work, 
 nor progress, nor fulfilment of duties is possible, 
 taxation must not begin until an income exceeds the sum 
 of money necessary for the maintenance of life. 
 
 But there are other means. The secularisation or 
 appropriation of ecclesiastic possessions — a step which 
 there is no advantage in discussing now, but which is 
 inevitable when once the nation assumes a mission of 
 education and of collective progress — will place in the 
 hands of the State a vast sum of wealth. Now suppose 
 that to this is added the value represented by land fertile 
 and capable of cultivation, but hitherto unreclaimed, 
 the value represented by the profits of the railways and 
 of other public undertakings, of which the administration 
 should be centred in the State: the value represented by the 
 landed property belonging to the Communes,^ the value 
 represented by collateral inheritances, which beyond the 
 fourth degree ought to revert to the State, and the value 
 of other sources of wealth which it is unnecessary to 
 enumerate. Suppose that with all this immense 
 accumulation of wealth a National Fund was 
 formed, to be consecrated to the intellectual and 
 economic progress of the whole country. Why should 
 not a considerable part of this fund be transformed, with 
 the necessary precautions to prevent its being squandered, 
 
 ' This property belongs legally to the Commune, morally to the needy 
 members of the Commune. It is not meant that it should be taken from 
 the Communes, but that it should be consecrated to the poor of each com- 
 mune by being constituted under the direction ot elective Communal 
 Councils the inalienable cn/xVn/ of agricultural Associations.
 
 The Duties of Man 117 
 
 into a fund of credit, to be distributed at a rate of 
 interest of one and a half or of two per cent, to the 
 voluntary working-men's associations, formed according 
 to the principles indicated above and offering the security 
 of morality and of capacity ? That capital ought to be 
 sacred to the work of the future also and not of a single 
 generation only. But the vast scale of the operations 
 would ensure compensation for inevitable losses from 
 time to time. 
 
 The distribution of this credit ought to be carried out, 
 not by the Government nor by a Central National Bank, 
 but by local Banks administered by elective Commu?tal 
 Councils and with the supervision of the Central Govern- 
 ment. Without lessening the actual wealth of the 
 various classes, and without allowing one class alone to 
 monopolise the revenue from the taxation which is levied on 
 all the citizens, and ought therefore to be devoted to the 
 benefit of all, the series of measures suggested here, by 
 diffusing credit, increasing and improving production, com- 
 pelling a graduated diminution in the rate of interest and 
 trusting to the zeal and the interest of all the producers 
 to insure the progress and continuity of work, would 
 replace the limited sum of wealth now concentrated in a 
 few hands and ill-directed, by the rich nation, manager of 
 its own production and its own consumption. And this, 
 Italian Working-men, is your future. You can hasten it. 
 Win your Country ! Establish a popular Government 
 which shall represent its collective life, its mission, its 
 thought. Organise yourselves in a vast universal League 
 of the People, so that your voice shall be tJie voice of 
 millions and not of a fezv individuals only. You have 
 Truth and Justice on your side : the Nation will listen 
 to you. 
 
 But beware ! Believe the words of a man who has 
 studied for thirty years the course of events in Europe, 
 and has seen the holiest and most useful enterprises fail, 
 at the moment of success, through the immoraUty of 
 men : you will not succeed except hy growing better your- 
 selves ; you will not win the exercise of your rights except 
 by deservitig them, through self-sacrifice, industry, and
 
 ii8 The Duties of Man 
 
 love. If you seek them in the name of a duty fulfilled 
 or to be fulfilled, you will obtain them, but if you seek 
 them in the name of egoism or of some right to well- 
 being taught you by materialists, you will only achieve 
 momentary triumphs, followed by tremendous dis- 
 illusionments. Those who speak to you in the name of 
 well-being, of material happiness, will betray you. They 
 also seek their own well-being, and to obtain it they will 
 unite with you, as with an element of strength, while they 
 have obstacles to overcome ; but as soon as they have 
 obtained well-being by your aid, they will abandon you 
 that they may enjoy their acquisition in tranquillity. This 
 is the history of the last half-century, and the name of 
 this half-century is materialism. 
 
 And it is a history of sorrow and of blood. I have 
 seen them — the men who denied God, religion, the 
 virtue of duty and of self-sacrifice, and spoke only in the 
 name of the right to happiness and enjoyment — fighting 
 boldly with the words People and Liberty on their lips, 
 and mingling themselves with us men of the new faith, 
 who rashly received them into our ranks. As soon as an 
 opportunity was offered to them, through a victory or a 
 cowardly compromise, of securing comfort and pleasure 
 for themselves, they deserted us, and became our bitter 
 enemies the day after. A very few years of danger and 
 privation were enough to weary them. Being unconscious 
 of a law of duty, and without faith in a mission imposed 
 upon men by a Power supreme over all, why should 
 they have persisted in sacrifice until the end of life ? 
 And with deep grief I have seen the sons of the people, 
 who had been educated in materialism by such philoso- 
 phers as these, prove false to their mission, false to the 
 future, false to their country and to themselves, beguiled 
 by the stupid, immoral hope of perhaps finding material 
 well-being in the caprices and the interests of tyranny. 
 I saw the working-men of France stand by, indifferent 
 spectators of the coup d'etat of the 2nd of December, 
 because all social questions had been reduced for them 
 to a question of material prosperity, and they deluded 
 themselves into the belief that the promises, artfully
 
 The Duties of Man 119 
 
 circulated among them by the man who had extinguished 
 the liberty of their country, would become facts. To-day 
 they lament their lost liberty, and have not acquired 
 the promised well-being. No ! I tell you with profound 
 conviction, that without God, without belief in a Law, with- 
 out morality, without the power of self-sacrifice, and by 
 straying from the right path in the wake of men who have 
 neither faith, nor worship of truth, nor the life of 
 apostles, nor anything beyond the vanity of their own 
 systems, you will never succeed. You may bring about 
 insurrections, but never the true, the great Revolution 
 which you and I invoke ; that Revolution, if it is not 
 an illusion of egoists, spurred on by revenge, is a work 
 of religion. 
 
 To improve yourselves and others — this must be the 
 first aim and the supreme hope of every reform, of every 
 social change. The lot of a ?)iafi is not altered by reno- 
 vating and embellishing the house in which he lives; 
 where only the body of a slave breathes, and not the soul 
 of a man, all reforms are useless ; the neat dwelling, 
 luxuriously furnished, is a whited sepulchre, nothing 
 else. You will never induce the society to which you 
 belong to substitute the system of association for that 
 of wages, except by proving that your association will be 
 an instrument of improved production and of collective 
 prosperity. And you can only prove this by showing 
 yourselves capable of founding and maintaining the 
 association by honesty, mutual kindliness, capacity for 
 sacrifice, and love of work. To progress you must show 
 yourselves capable of progressing. 
 
 Three things are sacred : Tradition, Progress, 
 Association. " I believe " — thus I wrote twenty years 
 ago — " in the immense voice of God which the centuries 
 transmit to me through the universal tradition of 
 Humanity ; and it tells me that the Family, the Nation, 
 and Humanity are the three spheres within which the 
 human individiuil has to labour for the common etid, for 
 the moral perfecting of himself and of others, or rather 
 of himself through others and for others. It tells me 
 that property is designed to manifest the material activity
 
 I20 The Duties of Man 
 
 of the individual, the part which he takes in the trans- 
 formation of the physical world, as the right to vote ought 
 to manifest the part which he takes in the administration 
 of the political world. It tells me that the merit or 
 demerit of the individual before God depends upon his 
 use of these rights in those spheres of activity. It tells 
 me that all these things, being elements of human 
 nature, are transformed and modified continuously as they 
 approach ever more nearly to the ideal which our souls 
 dimly apprehend, but that they can never be destroyed ; 
 and that the dreams of communism, of the abolition and 
 absorption of the individual in the social whole, have 
 never been more than accidental and transitory 
 phenomena in the life of the human race, appearing 
 in every great intellectual and moral crisis, and are 
 incapable of realisation except upon a minute scale, as in 
 the Christian Convents. I beheve in the eternal progress 
 of the Hfe in God's creatures, and in the progress of 
 Thought and of Action, not only in the man of the past, 
 but in the man of the future. I believe that it is not of 
 so much importance to determine the form of future 
 progress, as to open, by means of a truly rehgious 
 education, every path of progress to men and to render 
 them capable of accomplishing it. And I believe that 
 man cannot be made better, more worthy of love, more 
 noble, more divine — which is our aim and endvi^on earth — 
 by heaping upon him physical enjoyments and by setting 
 before him as the object of life that irony which is called 
 happiness. I believe in Association as the sole means 
 which we possess of accomplishing Progress, not only 
 because it multiplies the action of the productive forces, 
 but because it brings into closer relations all the various 
 manifestations of the human soul, and puts the life of the 
 individual into communion with xhe collective life. And I 
 know that Association can never be fruitful unless it exists 
 among free itidividuals, among free nations capable of 
 realising their solemn mission. 1 believe that man ought 
 to be able to eat and live without havmg all the hours of 
 his existence absorbed by material labour ; that he ought 
 to have time tor developing his superior faculties. But
 
 The Duties of Man 121 
 
 I listen with terror to those voices which tell us : tnan's 
 aim in life is self-preservation ; enjoymetit is his right, 
 because I know that such maxims can only create 
 egoists and that they have been in France and elsewhere, 
 and threaten to be in Italy, the destruction of every noble 
 idea, of all martyr spirit, and every pledge of future great- 
 ness. 
 
 " That which saps the vitality of Humanity in the 
 present day is the want of a common faith, of a thought 
 shared by all and reuniting earth and heaven, the Universe 
 and God. Lacking this common faith, man has bowed 
 down before lifeless matter, and has consecrated himself 
 to the adoration of the idol Self-interest. And the first 
 priests of that fatal worship were the kings, princes, and 
 evil governments. They invented the horrible formula : 
 every otie for himself; they knew that thus they would 
 create egoism, and that between the egoist and the slave 
 there is but one step." 
 
 Italian Working-men, my Brothers, shun this step. 
 On shunning it depends your future. 
 
 A solemn mission is yours : to prove that we are all 
 sons of God and brothers in Him. You can only do 
 this by improving yourselves and fulfilling your Duty. 
 
 I have pointed out to you, to the best of my power, 
 what your Duty is. And the chief and most essential 
 duty of all is to your Country. To secure the freedom 
 and unity of your Country is your duty ; and it is also 
 a necessity. The encouragement and the measures of 
 which I have spoken can only be the work of a Free and 
 United Country. The amelioration of your social 
 condition can only result from your participation in the 
 political life of the nation. Without the franchise you 
 will never find true representatives of your aspirations 
 and needs. Without a popular government which, 
 seated in Rome, shall formulate the Italian Compact, 
 founded upon the common consent of the nation, and 
 directed to the progress of all the citizens of the State, 
 there is no hope of better things for you. That day in 
 which, following the example of the French socialists, 
 you should separate the social from the political question
 
 122 The Duties of Man 
 
 and should say : We can emancipate ourselves whatever 
 may be the forin of constitution which rules the Country, 
 you would yourselves seal the perpetuity of your social 
 servitude. 
 
 And I will point out to you, in bidding you farewell, 
 another Duty, not less solemn than that which obliges us 
 to found a Free and United Nation. 
 
 Your emancipation can only be founded on the 
 triumph of one principle, the unity of the Human 
 Family. To-day, half of the human family, the half from 
 which we seek inspiration and consolation, the half to 
 which is entrusted the first education of our children, is, 
 by a singular contradiction, declared civilly, politically, 
 and socially unequal, and is excluded from this unity. 
 It is for you who seek your emancipation, in the name 
 of religious truth, to protest in every way and upon every 
 occasion against this negation of unity. 
 
 The emancipatio7t of woman should be always coupled 
 by you with the emancipation of the working-man. It 
 will give your work the consecration of a universal 
 truth.
 
 INTERESTS AND PRINCIPLES
 
 INTERESTS AND PRINCIPLES 
 
 I 
 
 January 6th, 1 836. 
 
 There is a charge too often brought against those- 
 who, like us, love to dwell on political generalities, and 
 insist at length on principles ; the charge, that we pay 
 little attention to material interests, that we are apt to- 
 sacrifice or r\eg\ecifacts for what they are pleased to call 
 abstract theories. 
 
 We are told : " You are dreamers. What use to us 
 are all your discussions about principles which can only 
 mature slowly, and which you can only address to a 
 small minority of intellects ? At the present moment we 
 want facts, and facts alone. Come down from the lofty 
 sphere where we are not disposed to follow you, to the 
 firm ground of practical work. Leave generalities ; 
 descend to particulars. Speak of what we can see, and 
 what is palpable to the senses. Face the question of 
 material interests ; would you forsooth profess to make 
 the masses progress by virtue of mere abstractions ? 
 Yonder are people dying for lack of food ; men who 
 are hungry and athirst, men who have not wherewith 
 to clothe themselves in winter. All your theories of a 
 social polity, of Humanity, of a unifying and religious 
 faith, will never renew their strength, never clothe their 
 nakedness. Proclaim those needs openly. Teach the 
 proletariat its rights. Uncloak one by one the crimes, 
 the injustice, the infamy of our rulers. Denounce every 
 act of authority that injures any interest whatever, that 
 infringes a single right. Fight, Fight. Shout Liberty 
 in the ears of the People. Revolt is the principle of 
 the century. Then guide it. In the stormy atmosphere 
 
 125
 
 126 Interests and Principles 
 
 that surrounds us, amid the political tempest that pursues 
 and presses upon us on all sides, do not cheat yourselves 
 into thinking that your message of peace, your weak 
 speech of religion and love, will be heeded. Let the 
 Future and its Faith alone. The Present demands all 
 our thought. Consecrate yourselves to it, and do not 
 come and weary us with your mysticism and spiritualistic 
 beliefs." 
 
 They who speak thus are convinced that it is enough 
 to crush us if they call us dreamers. 
 
 And nevertheless those very men are attacked by dis- 
 couragement ; they are silent — or if they speak, they curse. 
 A hundred times they have thought to achieve their 
 purpose ; as often have they been compelled to start 
 afresh. All they say has been already said ; all they 
 do has been already done, — but never to any purpose. 
 
 All the war of criticism, all the opposition of detail and 
 ■of practical reform that they urge on us to-day has been 
 experimented to the uttermost in France. And where is 
 France to-day ? She has fallen headlong from one wreck 
 to another : from the Revolution to the Empire ; from 
 the Empire to the Bourbon Monarchy ; from Charles X. 
 to Louis Philippe. What has she gained by the change ? 
 What difference can you see between the censorship of 
 the first Restoration and the September Press Laws ? ^ 
 
 The blood-stained wounds of the proletariat have been 
 exposed. A thousand times have men counted the 
 victims of the deep social inequality that insults the 
 Cross of Christ. 
 
 We know now the sweat and tears that the rich man's 
 bread costs the poor. Yes, and the poor man, the work- 
 man, has learnt to plead his cause before the tribunal of 
 frightened Europe, his indictment, summarised in two 
 words, terrible in their energy — Death or Work. A 
 people of workmen has protested against the present 
 division of labour, against the greed of the privileged 
 classes. What has been the result ? What has been 
 
 ' A series of violently repressive laws against the freedom of the press, 
 known in French History as the Laws of September, carried by the De 
 Broglie Ministry in September 1835. See Louis Bla.nc's His/oire de Dix 
 Ans, Vol. IV. c. xi. p. 312.
 
 Interests and Principles 127 
 
 done ? Have any remedies been tried, or any great 
 improvements made ? To the producer's cry of Death or 
 Work, the unproductive and speculative class replied — 
 Death. The cannon has thundered. All this opposition, 
 so intrepid, so indefatigable in the petty skirmishes for 
 interests and rights, looked on at the butchery with their 
 arms at rest. Not in all France did a single cry answer 
 the cry of anguish of the Lyons workmen.^ Why is this ? 
 
 Thanks to the writers of a whole century, — thanks to 
 the martyrs of many centuries, — Liberty and Equality 
 VL?, principles SiXe to-day admitted in the series of social 
 axioms. Independence is universally recognised as the 
 fairest jewel in a People's crown. The right not to be 
 oppressed, or maimed, or tortured by the tyranny of the 
 few, or by foreign invasion, is enshrined in the hearts 
 of all as a sacred imprescriptible right. But does this 
 advance us further ? Not only in Italy, and Poland, 
 and Germany, but everywhere, material interests are 
 openly violated ; and yet we all are conscious of our 
 rights. Ask whom you will in those unhappy countries. 
 You will everywhere encounter hatred of the Russian 
 and the Austrian ; a clear desire for freedom ; the 
 consciousness of right that would justify insurrection ; 
 the conviction of the real advantages that would result 
 for future generations. And yet they suffer in silence ; 
 they bow their necks to the yoke; they do not strive 
 to 'break it. Why is this ? 
 
 Because between oppression and insurrection it is 
 necessary to pass through gendarmes, prisons, and the 
 gallows. Because to face all that, the consciousness 
 of the fact is not enough ; they must feel their duty to 
 destroy it. Because the mere conviction does not suffice 
 to begin a struggle : that must break forth as the mani- 
 festation oiz. faith. 
 
 There were men who preached insurrection to those 
 peoples ; who said to them, " You have material in- 
 terests ; those interests are trodden under foot \ see that 
 
 'Arbitrary suppression of the Workmen's Associations of Lyons by the 
 military forces, April 1834. See Louis Blanc's Histoire de Dix Ans, 
 Vol. IV. c. V. pp. 196-201.
 
 128 Interests and Principles 
 
 you provide a remedy. You have rights ; those rights 
 are violated ; see that you assert free play for them." 
 For this they conspired. But tyranny was watching. 
 It shed their blood before the conspiracy was ripe ; it 
 sent a few heads rolling at the conspirators' feet. Then 
 they stepped back. A single chance of death outweighed 
 a thousand chances of success. They said, " Our rights 
 are valuable, and we should dearly wish to win them ; 
 but first of all rights is the right to live. The interest 
 of our own life surpasses all other possible material 
 interests. It embraces and outweighs them all. With- 
 out life we can have neither rights, nor well-being, nor 
 riches, nor material improvement. Why should we 
 hazard our life for an uncertain stake ? Where should 
 we find a recompense?" Such were their words ; and 
 if we refuse to leave the circle of material calculations, 
 we must own they are consistent. Two-thirds at least 
 of popular Revolutions only benefit the succeeding 
 generation. The generation that made them is nearly 
 always condemned to mark with its own dead the road 
 of progress for its successor. Itself can never enjoy the 
 result of its travail. 
 
 Now, what theory of material interests, what proof of 
 individual rights, could argue a law of self-sacrifice, or 
 martyrdom, if martyrdom be the goal that awaits us ? 
 Analyse, compare, phrase by phrase, all the doctrines 
 of the utilitarians; you will never harmonise with them 
 the sacrifice of life. Martyrdom is folly to a People that 
 has no stimulus outside material interests ; to their in- 
 telligence Christ has lost all meaning. 
 
 For us, we maintain that there has never been a single 
 great Revolution that has not had its source outside 
 material interests. We know of riots, of popular in- 
 surrections, but of none that has been crowned with 
 success, or transformed into a Revolution. 
 
 II 
 
 Every Revolution is the work of a principle which has 
 been accepted as a basis of faith. Whether it invoke
 
 Interests and Principles 129 
 
 Nationality, Liberty, Equality, or Religion, it always 
 fulfils itself in the name of a Principle, that is to say, of a 
 great truth, which, being recognised and approved by 
 the majority of the inhabitants of a country, constitutes 
 a common belief, and sets before the masses a new aim, 
 while Authority misrepresents or rejects it. A Revolu- 
 tion, violent or peaceful, includes a negation and an 
 affirmation : the negation of an existing order of things, 
 the affirmation of a new order to be substituted for it. 
 A Revolution proclaims that the State is rotten ; that 
 its machinery no longer meets the needs of the greatest 
 number of the citizens ; that its institutions are power- 
 less to direct the general movement ; that popular and 
 social thought has passed beyond the vital principle of 
 those institutions ; that the new phase in the develop- 
 ment of the national faculties finds neither expression 
 nor representation in the official constitution of the 
 country, and that it must therefore create one for itself 
 This the Revolution does create. Since its task is to 
 increase and not diminish the nation's patrimony, it 
 violates neither the truths that the majority possess, nor 
 the rights they hold sacred ; but it reorganises everything 
 on a new basis ; it gathers and harmonises round the 
 new principle all the elements and forces of the country ; 
 iLgives a unity of direction towards the new aim, to all 
 those tendencies which before were scattered in the 
 pursuit of different aims. Then the Revolution has done 
 its work. 
 
 We recognise no other meaning in Revolutions. If 
 a Revolution did not imply a general reorganisation by 
 virtue of a social principle ; if it did not remove a 
 discord in the elements of a State, and place harmony 
 in its stead ; if it did not secure a moral unity ; so far 
 from declaring ourselves Revolutionists, we should believe 
 it our duty to oppose the revolutionary movement with 
 all our power. 
 
 Without the purpose hinted at above, there may be 
 riots, and at times victorious insurrections, but no Revo- 
 lutions. You will have changes of men and adminis- 
 tration ; one caste succeeding to another ; one dynastic
 
 130 Interests and Principles 
 
 brancli ousting the other. This necessitates retreat ; a 
 slow reconstruction of the past, which the insurrection 
 had suddenly destroyed ; the gradual re-establishment 
 under new names of the old order of things, which the 
 people had risen to destroy. Societies have such need 
 of unity that if they miss it in insurrection they turn 
 back to a restoration. Then there is new discontent, 
 a new struggle, a new explosion. France has proven 
 it abundantly. In 1830 she performed miracles of 
 daring and valour for a negation : she rose to destroy, 
 without positive beliefs, without any definite organic 
 pupose, and thought she had won her end when she 
 cancelled the old principle of legitimacy. She descended 
 into that abyss which insurrection alone can never fill ; 
 and because she did not recognise how needful is some 
 principle of reconstruction, she finds herself to-day, six 
 years after the July Revolution, five years after the days 
 of November, two years after the days of April, well 
 on her way to a thorough restoration. 
 
 We cite the case of France because she is expected 
 to give political lessons, hopes, and sympathies ; and 
 because France is the modern nation in which theories 
 of pure reaction founded on suspicion, on individual 
 right, on liberty alone, are most militant, therefore the 
 practical consequences of her mistakes are shown most 
 convincingly. But twenty other instances might be 
 cited. For fifty years, every movement which, in its 
 turn, was successful as an insurrection, but failed as a 
 revolution, has proven how everything depends on the 
 presence or absence of a principle of reconstruction. 
 
 Wherever, in fact, individual rights are exercised with- 
 out the influence of some great thought that is common 
 to all ; wherever individual interests are not harmonised 
 by some organisation which is directed by a positive 
 ruling principle, and by the consciousness of a common 
 aim, there must exist a tendency for some to usurp 
 others' rights. In a society like ours, where a division 
 into classes, call them what you will, still exists in full 
 strength, every right is bound to clash with another 
 right, envious and mistrustful of it ; every interest
 
 Interests and Principles 131 
 
 naturally conflicts with an opposing interest : the land- 
 lord's with the peasant's ; the manufacturer's or capital- 
 ist's with the workman's. All through Europe — since 
 equality, however accepted in theory, has been rejected 
 in practice, and the sum of social wealth has accumu- 
 lated in the hands of a small number of men, while the 
 masses gain but a mere pittance by their relentless toil 
 — it is a cruel irony, it gives inequality a new lease of 
 life, if you establish unrestricted liberty, and tell men 
 they are free, and bid them use their rights. 
 
 A social sphere must have its centre ; a centre to 
 the individualities which jostle which each other inside 
 it ; a centre to all the scattered rays with diffuse and 
 w^aste their light and heat. Now, the theory which 
 bases the social structure on individual interests cannot 
 supply this centre. The absence of a centre, or the 
 selection among opposing interests of that which has 
 the most vigorous life, means either anarchy or privilege 
 — that is, either barren strife or the germ of aristocracy, 
 under whatever name it disguises itself: this is the part- 
 ing of the ways which it is impossible to avoid. 
 
 Is this what we want when we invoke a Revolution, 
 since a Revolution is indispensable to reorganise our 
 nationality? Do we want to condemn ourselves to 
 ceaseless eddying in the whirlpool where France and 
 Europe have tossed for half a century? Do we want 
 to be always making and unmaking, and be still in 
 a provisional dispensation, be still uncertain of the 
 morrow ? Do we want strife, or peace and harmony ? 
 This is the whole question. 
 
 For us there is no doubt. To find a centre for all 
 the many interests we must rise to a region above them 
 all, independent of them all. To close a provisional 
 dispensation and organise a peaceful future, we must 
 reconnect that centre with something, eternal as Truth, 
 progressive as its development in the sphere of facts. 
 To prevent the clash of individualities we must find an 
 aim common to all, and direct ourselves towards it. To 
 make it easier for all to reach it we must consolidate 
 and associate the forces of all. What else is association
 
 132 Interests and Principles 
 
 but a conception that makes for unity ? And how can 
 such a conception be understood without a principle 
 around which it may revolve ? 
 
 We are, therefore, driven to the sphere of principles. 
 We must revive beUef in them ; we must fulfil a work of 
 faith. The logic of things demands it. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Principles alone are constructive. Ideals are never 
 translated into facts without the general recognition 
 of some strong belief. Great things are never done 
 except by the rejection of individualism and a constant 
 sacrifice of self to the common progress. Now, self- 
 sacrifice is the sense of Duty in action. And the sense 
 of Duty cannot spring from individual interests, but 
 postulates the knowledge of a superior, inviolable Law. 
 Every law rests on a principle : otherwise it is arbitrary 
 and its violation is permissible. This principle must be 
 freely accepted by everybody : otherwise the law is 
 despotic and its violation is a duty. The application of 
 principle lies in a life in conformity with law. To dis- 
 cover, to study, to preach the principle which shall be 
 the basis of the social law of the country and of the 
 times in which he lives, should be the aim of every man 
 who directs his thought to any political organisation. 
 Faith in that principle is the parent of effective and 
 lasting work. The isolated and barren knowledge of 
 ifidividual iiiterests can only lead to the isolated and 
 barren knowledge of individual right. And the know- 
 ledge of individual right will, where that right is denied, 
 lead in its turn to discontent, opposition, strife, some- 
 times insurrection, but insurrection which, like that of 
 Lyons, results only in a bitterer hostility between the 
 classes which compose society. Whenever, therefore, 
 we desire to do one of those great deeds called Revolu- 
 tions, we must always return to the knowledge and 
 preaching of principles. The true instrument of the pro- 
 gress of the peoples is to be sought in the moral factor. 
 But do we, therefore, neglect the economic factor
 
 Interests and Principles 133 
 
 material interests ; the importance of industrial victories, 
 and the labours that won them ? Do we preach 
 principles for principles' sake, faith for faith's sake, as 
 the romantic school of literature to-day preaches art for 
 arfs sake. 
 
 God forbid ! We do not suppress the economic factor : 
 we believe, on the contrary, that it is destined in the 
 society of the future to admit an ever-increasing exten- 
 sion of the principle of equality, and to incorporate the 
 fruitful principle of association. But we subordinate the 
 economic to the moral factor, because if withdrawn from 
 its controlling influence, dissociated from principles, and 
 abandoned to the theories of individualism which govern 
 it to-day, it would result in brutish egotism ; in perpetual 
 strife between men who should be brothers ; in the 
 expression of the appetites of the human species, whilst 
 it ought rather to represent on the ascending curve of 
 progress the material translation of man's activity, the 
 expression of man's industrial mission. 
 
 No, we do not neglect material interests : on the 
 contrary, we reject as imperfect and irreconcilable with 
 the needs of the age every doctrine which does not 
 mclude them, or regards them as less important than 
 they really are. We believe that to every stage of pro- 
 gress there should be a corresponding positive improve- 
 ment in the material condition of the people ; and this 
 successive improvement, in a certain manner, verifies 
 for us the progress made. But we maintain that 
 material interests cannot be developed alone, that 
 they are dependent on principles, that they are not 
 the end and aim of society; because we know that 
 such a theory is destructive of human dignity ; because 
 we remember that when the material factor began to 
 hold the field in Rome, and duty to the people was 
 reduced to giving them bread and public shoivs, Rome 
 and its people were hastening to destruction ; because 
 we see to-day in France, in Spain, in every country, 
 liberty trodden under foot, or betrayed precisely in 
 the name of commercial interests and that servile 
 doctrine which parts material well-being from principles.
 
 134 Interests and Principles 
 
 We do not forget the services rendered to the cause 
 of progress by the political school of the Rights of Man, 
 nor the importance of the economic teachings, which 
 towards the end of the eighteenth century assailed the 
 absurd and immoral restrictive system under which 
 governments committed the industrial development of 
 the nation to customs officers, as they committed its 
 moral development to censors and constabulary.^ In 
 an age when the rights of individuals were systematically 
 violated, these teachings were indispensable, and without 
 them we should not now be where we are. But to-day 
 we have passed beyond them ; we cannot stand still 
 within their limits without denying the new tendencies 
 which aim at reconstruction. The peoples hailed the 
 destructive work of the past century because they hoped 
 that a new organisation would take the place of the old 
 one ; but since then they have been disillusioned again 
 and again, and now they will not stir unless rekindled 
 by a new organic programme. The individual is sacred : 
 his interests, his rights, are inviolable. But to make 
 them the only foundation of the political structure, and 
 tell each individual to win his future with his own 
 unaided strength, is to surrender society and progress 
 to the accidents of chance and the vicissitudes of a 
 never-ending struggle ; to neglect the great fact of man's 
 nature, his social instinct ; to plant egotism in the soul ; 
 and, in the long run, impose the dominion of the strong 
 over the weak, of those who have over those who have 
 not. The many abortive attempts of the last forty 
 years prove this. 
 
 ^Vhen, therefore, we preach almost exclusively those 
 principles which seem to us to derive from the actual 
 condition of human knowledge, we purpose following 
 the way which leads to the material as well as the moral 
 future of the nations. When we insist on the need of 
 raising on those principles a structure of belief, in the 
 place of dead or dying creeds, we shall be responding 
 to a prayer of the peoples, often ill-expressed, more 
 
 ' Bini; armed Italian police with a military organisation somewhat 
 similar to the Royal Irish Constabulary.
 
 Interests and Principles 135 
 
 often ill-understood, but which has been revealed in 
 many forms most dissociated and dissimilar, and is the 
 historical secret of the nineteenth century. And when 
 we say : " Rise to the sphere of principles ; guide the 
 peoples, now wandering in darkness, to the law of 
 Progress, to Humanity, to God ; awake again the moral 
 sense, the sentiment of Duty in men whom others would 
 fain convert into calculating-machines ; show a great 
 purpose to the young, so easily assailed to-day by 
 discouragement and doubt ; give to men by enthusiasm, 
 and religion, and love, a new moral existence, since the 
 old one of privilege and inequahty is dust and ashes," — 
 when we say this, we are convinced that every other 
 method of treating public questions is an illusion, or 
 a lie ; that political forms considered in isolation 
 and by themselves are, as the ancients said of law, 
 spiders' webs that imprison little insects, but which are 
 torn through by big ones ; that the spirit alone gives 
 importance to forms ; that institutions are a dead letter^ 
 ineffectual and impotent, whenever the breath of popular 
 progress, and brotherhood, and association does not 
 inspire them ; that all written declarations are futile 
 where men have surrendered themselves to individualism, 
 and organised themselves on a basis of inequality, and 
 therefore naturally tend to elude such declarations, 
 and rather seek in them a weapon of defence against 
 others ; convinced that no other method can profit 
 the cause of Humanity, the great interests of the People, 
 and Labour, and Nationality, and moral growth — the only 
 things which merit our sacrifices and our labours. 
 
 Instil into a People's soul, or into its teachers and 
 writers, one single principle, and it will be worth more 
 to that People and Country than a whole system of 
 interests and rights addressed to each individual ; or 
 a war to the death against the acts of a corrupt govern- 
 ment. 
 
 If by dint of example you can root in a nation's 
 heart the principle which the French Revolution pro- 
 claimed but never carried out, that the State owes every 
 member the means of existence or the chance to work
 
 136 Interests and Principles 
 
 for it, and add a fair definition of existence, you have 
 prepared the triumph of right over privilege ; the end 
 of the monopoly of one class over another, and the 
 end of pauperis7n ^ ; for which at present there are 
 only palliatives, Christian charity, or ' cold and brutal j 
 maxims like those of the English school of political 
 economists. 
 
 When you have raised men's minds to believe in 
 the other principle : that society is an association of 
 labours, and can, thanks to that belief, deduce both 
 in theory and practice all its consequences ; you will 
 have no more castes, no more aristocracies, or civil 
 wars, or crises. You will have a People. 
 
 And when the gospel of the brotherhood of all 
 the men of a nation has made the soul a sanctuary 
 of virtue and love ; when the great conception of 
 Nationality is no more dwarfed to mean proportions ; 
 when it seeks as a basis for its rights something more 
 than mere material interest, interest that always has its 
 rivals ; when the mother repeats its pure and holy 
 doctrine to the child at her knee, at those hours of 
 morn and even when woman, angel-grown, teaches 
 her offspring heavenly truths as axioms and principles 
 immutable — then only will you have a nation such as 
 you can never have from sophists who would found 
 a godless Nationality. For Nationality is belief in a 
 common origin and end, and if set up to-day by one 
 interest it can be overthrown to-morrow by another 
 interest more daring and more powerful. 
 
 And so it must ever be. Principles, which some 
 would relegate among abstractions, by their nature 
 lie so near material interests, and what is called the 
 economic factor, that they involve its practical triumph 
 as an inevitable consequence. The sphere of principles 
 includes and embraces them all. But all material 
 progress is the infallible result of all moral progress. 
 We cease to waste our strength in a petty war, nor try 
 to defeat interests in detail and without guarantee 
 
 ' In text, 7uciidicita — mendicity. A phase of 'the social problem in 
 Continental nations analogous to pauperism in England.,
 
 Interests and Principles 137 
 
 of permanent success; we strive instead to reach 'le 
 common source and plant ourselves in the key of the 
 position. The effects of our exertions may appear more 
 slowly, but they are more certain, and alone are durable. 
 The work of faith, the moral work, advances insensibly, 
 like the movement of the hand on the clock, but it alone 
 is called to mark the solemn hours of the nations. 
 
 A newspaper is not a work of legislation : it operates 
 indirectly only. A newspaper does not clothe the 
 naked poor, or give bread to the starving : it preaches 
 and insists that this should be done. Nov/, hov/ shall 
 we work on the reader's mind? How convince him, 
 not only of the existence of the decease but of the 
 need of a remedy? How communicate to him the 
 spirit of activity, the pov.-er of self-sacrifice, which 
 are necessary to overcome obstacles ? A newspaper, 
 generally speaking, is written for the well-to-do classes, 
 and these classes, comfortable in their prosperity, have 
 never experienced privation or suffering ; they see at 
 times the misery of the poor, but easily accustom 
 them.selves to consider it as a sad social necessity, and 
 leave to future generations the care of finding a remedy. 
 Sv\'eet are indifference and oblivion to the man who 
 sits in the sanctuary of his family, surrounded by 
 smiling faces, while the v/intry blast blows without, 
 and the snowflakes, swift and fine, beat against the 
 panes of a double window. Do you hope to drag 
 these favourites of the world from their apath)', by the 
 simple expression of the eco?iomic situation and what 
 sliould be its substitute in a well-organised society ? 
 Do you hope to shake them from their selfish repose, 
 merely by cold analysis of what happens in a sphere 
 to which they never penetrate ? They \n\\ approve 
 perhaps in theory your utilitarian doctrines ) but do 
 not ask them to promote thcrn. Why should they ? 
 You speak in the name of interests. Is not the first 
 of all interests enjoyment ? And they do enjoy. 
 
 There is a great gulf betv/een approving a thing 
 and saciificing yourself for it, a gulf which you with 
 your methods cannot cross. And yet this is just the
 
 (
 
 138 Interests and Principles 
 
 problem. 'Mc.n is thought and action. Your theories 
 may modify the former; they cannot create the latter. 
 
 We must therefore modify, reform, transform, the 
 whole man into a unity of life. We must teach him 
 not rights but dtdy, awaken to better things his de- 
 generate nature, his half-exhausted soul, his drooping 
 enthusiasm ; v.'C must give him the consciousness of 
 'human v.or':h and men's mission here below, and thereby 
 raise the ?lr ngth to act v,'hich now is crushed by his 
 indifference. And this is a work for principles, and 
 belief, and religious thought, and faith. 
 
 This Avas the work of Jesus, He did not try to save a 
 dying world by criticism. He did not speak of interests 
 to men v.'hose souls v.-ere poisoned by the cult of 
 interests. He preached, in God's holy name, certain 
 truths till then unknown ; and these few truths, v.'hich 
 now after eighteen centuries we are striving to realise, 
 changed the face of the v/orld. One single spark of 
 faith achieved v/hat all the sophisms of the philosophic 
 schools had never caught a glimpse of: a forward step 
 in the Education of the Human Race. 
 
 The problem of to-day — we shall never weary of 
 repeating — is, as in the days of Christ, an edi/catiotial 
 problem. But what is Education unless it rest upon 
 principles, and drav/ its being from a common faith, and 
 strive for its victory ?
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE 
 
 \
 
 "Faith and the Future" was written in French at Bienne in 1835, ^t * 
 time when Louis Philippe had thrown off the mask and frankly broken 
 with the democratic movement to which he owed his throne. Its object 
 was to hearten the popular party, dispirited with the failure of the revo- 
 lution of 1830, and to urge them to push forward the revolutionary 
 agitation. The parliamentary strategy of 1815-30, a policy of compromise 
 and small reforms, had failed ; it had only exposed the defects of the 
 existing system, without suggesting a betterisubstitute. The constitutional 
 reformers had been defeated by their own doubts and fears ; the 
 democratic party must reproduce the enthusiasm, the unflinching adhesion 
 to principle, of the Great Revolution. It must cut itself clear from con- 
 ventions and prejudices, and boldl}^ avow a republican policy. Not that 
 the mere form of republican institutions had any magic in it. The world 
 needed the republican spirit, the essence of which was the devotion of the 
 individual to the common good, and which found its outward expression in 
 the substitution of associated effort for individual enterprise. Men who 
 had a great principle like this to assert could not be patient or silent ; and 
 in Italy and Poland and German j', where the press was gagged, and 
 public agitation led to the scaffold, there was no road but that of open 
 conflict with the government. Not that Mazzini, as he was careful to ex- 
 plain in a later note, advocated feverish, ill-considered, insurrectionary 
 movements ; the education of the secret press and the secret society must 
 precede revolution. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 The figures in parentheses on pages 150 onwards refer to notes too long 
 to put at the foot of the text which will be found at the end of the essay, 
 pages 184 to 194.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE 
 
 The crusade is being organised. Tlie monarchy arrays 
 itself for battle. It has returned to the dictatorial habits 
 of Louis XIV. and is pTepa.T\ng coi/ps d'etat vi'iih. the arms 
 of the sixteenth century. 
 
 In the midst of the great popular excitement of 1830 
 the monarchy was distraught for a moment, and thought 
 its doom had come. In truth we, and we alone, saved 
 it from its doom. We lost a marvellous opportunity. 
 We forgot that the morrow of victory is much more 
 perilous than its eve. Intoxicated with triumph and 
 pride, we pitched our tents when we ought to have 
 hastened on, and, like thoughtless children, we betook 
 ourselves to play with the arms of those we had 
 vanquished. Diplomacy lay well-nigh crushed under 
 the popular barricades, and yet we welcomed it as a 
 friend into our ranks ; we made its arts ours, and, raining 
 notes and protocols, learned to ape our discomfited 
 masters. Like the condottieri of old, we sent back free 
 and armed the prisoners of battle. The monarchy 
 was stretched low and at our mercy, and we, like 
 medieval knights, we republicans, drew back two paces 
 as though to give it an opportunity to remount. Coldly 
 calculating, it took advantage of our chivalrous ardour 
 to begin its work again, a work undertaken with a 
 constancy and unity of conception that should make us 
 blush at our discords and slackness. 
 
 While we were numbering our dead, they began 
 silently to increase their ranks. While we were disput- 
 ing among ourselves whether to march in the name of 
 
 141
 
 142 Faith and the Future 
 
 '91 or of '93, of Robespierre or of Baboeuf, they were 
 marching on, slowly, silently, caressing some, threatening 
 others, working their way underground when they thought 
 themselves not powerful enough to venture into the 
 light of day, avoiding obstacles they could not overcome. 
 Instead of snatching from the grave a shred or so of the 
 banner of the past, they clothed the whole past with 
 a semblance of life, and re-decked it with the colours 
 of the future. Anger, ambition, jealousy, everything 
 yielded to the one end of gaining Power. In the North 
 the form was given up to preserve the substance, and the 
 habits of despotism were renounced that the monarchy 
 of the usurper might fraternise with the monarchy of 
 divine right. In the South they knelt in the mire, and 
 suffered the insults of diplomacy, to obtain from it peace 
 and help. To-day the alliance is concluded, the equili- 
 brium re-established between the old and the new 
 powers ; and both alike weigh upon us. The enemies of 
 progress touch the apogee of power. Corruption has 
 conquered souls that fear could not reach ; gold has 
 finished the work of the prisons. Consciences have been 
 bought and sold, genius prostituted, anarchy sown among 
 thinkers, crosses and pensions showered upon some, 
 proscriptions and terrors upon others ; the bourgeoisie 
 has been seduced by trickery, suspicion sown broadcast, 
 espionage raised to a system. The monarchy in the pride 
 of its strength has cast the cloak aside, and to-day 
 impiously denies God, Progress, the People, Humanity. 
 With the constable^ on one side and the executioner on the 
 other, it wipes out our right to free movement and to the 
 future ; it destroys our memories and hopes, puts brute 
 force in the place of ideas, bids us to our knees as 
 it bade our fathers when they were serfs, when thought 
 was banned, intellect and conscience dumb, and silence 
 the law for all. And we, what shall we do ? Shall we 
 give way to despair ? Shall we renounce for a time our 
 battle-cry, frank, loyal, strenuous as our soul ? Repeat 
 the fifteen years' comedy ? Show that we are tamed ? 
 Deceive the monarchy which we could, and would not, 
 
 'See Note, p. 134.
 
 Faith and the Future 143 
 
 vanquish ? Copy its methods, its habits, its tactics ? 
 Lead it smilingly by tortuous ways, to the precipice's 
 edge, then suddenly unmask ourselves, stab it in the 
 back, and hurl it down the abyss ? 
 
 Men who adopt and counsel such as the only policy 
 left to us, who preach patience as the sole remedy for 
 our ills, or who admit the necessity of the struggle but 
 leave the powers that be to begin it, such men do not, 
 I believe, understand the present state of affairs. They 
 change a call to create into a call to oppose. They 
 falsify the stamp of the age ; they betray unconsciously 
 the cause they seek to further ; they forget that the task 
 assigned to the nineteenth century is one whose very 
 essence it is to create, initiate, make new, one which 
 only free spontaneous action and a free and daring 
 conscience can complete. 
 
 It is not enough to drag a monarchy to the abyss : 
 we must be prepared to fill up that abyss, fill it up 
 for ever, and on it raise a lasting edifice. Monarchies 
 can be un-made and re-made in a day. The mighty 
 hand of Napoleon overturned half a score ; but monarchy 
 still lives, and greeted his grave with a smile of triumph. 
 In 1830, a throne of eight centuries vanished under 
 three blows struck by the people; and yet we to-day 
 are proscribed by a monarchy which has risen from 
 its ruins. Let us never forget this. 
 
 AVhat was called the fifteen years' comedy was played 
 in France wondrous well. The skilful and flawless 
 Jesuitry of the actors might merit the envy of crowned 
 heads. What were the consequences ? 
 
 The fifteen years' comedy killed the monarchy of the 
 elder branch of the Bourbons ; but it killed at the 
 same time the frank, austere, revolutionary energy 
 which had placed France at the head of the nations 
 of Europe. While it doomed the powers that be to 
 sleepless dread, it doomed the advanced party in 
 France to a long role of dishonesty. For, through 
 it hypocrisy wormed itself into the souls of men, 
 calculation took the place of enthusiasm, the brain 
 superseded the heart, and theories of passive resistance
 
 144 Faith and the Future 
 
 succeeded to the genius 'that ever presses forward to 
 things new. The mascuHne, vigorous national thought 
 languished under a multitude of petty, bastard incom- 
 plete conceits, and apostasy entered the sphere of 
 political life. That disloyal, treacherous war of sub- 
 terfuges spread over French civilisation a stratum of 
 corruption whose results last to this day : another 
 such war would be fatal indeed. Here is matter for 
 reflection. When the times are ripe for breaking 
 from the present and advancing towards the future, 
 all hesitation is fatal : it unnerves and dissolves. Rapid 
 movement is the secret of all great victories. When the 
 consequences of a principle are exhausted, and the edifice 
 which has sheltered us for centuries threatens to fall, we 
 should shake the dust from our feet and hasten else- 
 where. Life is outside. Within, there is but the cold, 
 benumbing air of the tomb, scepticism wandering among 
 the ruins, egotism following in its track ; then, isolation 
 and death. 
 
 And to-day the times are ripe. The consequences 
 of the principle of individualism which dominated the 
 past are exhausted. The monarchy has reached its 
 second restoration and finds no more creative virtue in 
 itself; its life is but a wretched plagiarism. Show me, if 
 you can, a single important act, a single sign of European 
 life, that does not proceed from the social principle, 
 which does not depend upon the people, the king of the 
 future. The old world can only resist ; its remaining 
 strength is but the strength of passive resistance. The 
 aristocracies of to-day are but corpses, now and again 
 galvanised into motion. Monarchy is the reflection, the 
 shadow of a life that has passed away. Since 1814 the 
 future calls to us. For twenty-two years the people, 
 eager for a step forward, strain their ears for that cry. 
 And would you travel once more over the old ground, 
 fall back, begin again a task that is done, copy the past, 
 and, because the monarchy is in its dotage, return to 
 infancy ? 
 
 What do you hope for when you beg inspiration in the 
 enemy's camp, and follow in its footsteps ? Whither
 
 Faith and the Future 145 
 
 will you fare along the tortuous road of revolutionary 
 diplomacy over which you would drag the younger 
 generation ? Beware ! the roads of mere oppositioti such 
 as yours lead only to monarchy. There exists generally 
 an essential relation between the means and the end ; 
 and constitutional tactics can only result in constitutional 
 changes. The fifteen years' opposition gave birth to 
 1830. Every analogous opposition will (unforeseen circum- 
 stances apart) give birth to similar results. In 1830 the 
 people confined within the Charter the limits of the 
 attack, because it had used itself to confine in the same 
 bounds the limits of the defence. It will be ever the 
 same. If, in the old revolution, the French people angrily 
 answered the challenge of the allied monarchies of 
 Europe by beheading a king and raising the republican 
 banner, that challenge, we must never forget, was un- 
 provoked and a war to the death. Of the members of 
 the royal family, some were in arms against France on 
 the frontier ; others were persistent conspirators against 
 her in Paris. Without these causes the revolution would 
 never have reached so easily that state of things. The 
 impulse given by the demands of the States-General 
 would not have passed beyond the movement of '91. 
 But monarchical Europe to-day wages no open war of 
 arms against the revolutions of a people thirty millions 
 strong : she offers them a traitor's hand, and the kiss of 
 Judas. She does not challenge them to battle : she tries 
 to dishonour them. Then she creates a solitude about 
 them ; surrounds them like scorpions with a circle of fire, 
 and in that circle they consume their own strength, and 
 since the life of revolutions consists in growth, they 
 perish. 
 
 But suppose it happen otherwise ; suppose the people, 
 outstripping the first impulse, wipe out a principle instead 
 of simply modifying it ; suppose they change a mon- 
 archical revolution into a republican one, and attain the 
 purpose you have at heart. You will then have gained 
 the form, not the habits, customs, ideas, beliefs, of a 
 republic. The people which moves not from faith, but 
 by simple reaction against the abuses of monarchy, will
 
 146 
 
 Faith and the Future 
 
 preserve the antecedents, the traditions, the education of 
 the monarchy : you will have the form of a republic, but 
 the substance of a monarchy. Questions of political 
 organisation will overlay the true, the supreme question, 
 which is a moral and a social one. 
 
 Criticism will not regenerate the peoples. Criticism 
 is powerful to dissolve; not to create. Criticism is in- 
 capable of passing beyond the theory of the individual; 
 and the triumph of individualism can only engender a 
 revolution for protestantism and liberty. Far otherwise 
 is the republic. The repubhc, as I at least understand 
 it, means association, of which liberty is only an element, 
 a necessary antecedent. It means association, a new 
 philosophy of life, a divine Ideal that shall move the 
 world, the only means of regeneration vouchsafed to the 
 human race. Opposition is an instrument of mere 
 criticism. It kills ; it does not give life. And when it 
 declares a principle to be dead, it takes its seat upon the 
 dead body and stirs no further. Only a new Ideal can 
 thrust the corpse aside, and move forward in search of a 
 new life. For this reason the revolution of '89, a revolu- 
 tion essentially protestant in its character, ended by 
 enthroning criticism, by affirming the brotherhood of 
 individuals, by organising liberty. And by reason of this 
 the revolution of 1830 — a revolution purely of opposition 
 — proved itself from the first incapable of translating into 
 action that social conception of which it had distant 
 glimpses. Opposition can only demonstrate the barren- 
 ness, the decadence, the exhaustion of a principle. 
 Beyond, for it, there is the void, whereon men build not. 
 A republic is not planted upon a demonstration ad 
 absurdum. Direct proof is indispensable. Authoritative 
 Truth alone can give us salvation. 
 
 II 
 
 Two things are essential to future progress : the mani- 
 festation of a principle, and its incarnation in deeds. 
 Apostles of a faith which aims at construction, we can- 
 not advance save with banners unfurled, confronting the
 
 Faith and the Future 147 
 
 hostile faith in deadly battle. Wait, they say. But for 
 what? For opportunities? But what are opportunities 
 save a special arrangement of the circumstances whose 
 office it is to give birth to deeds ? And whence can 
 opportunities arise except from our own efforts ? Do 
 you want war ? Whom will the combatants be drawn 
 from? From those who are marching in full accord, 
 peoples who have even now renewed a covenant of 
 brotherhood, who have one end in view, one enemy, one 
 fear ? Will it be against peoples prostrate in the mire ? 
 War will never arise in Europe except by insurrection. 
 Do you want coups (Fetat ? Only a strenuous, obstinate 
 struggle can make them inevitable. But how maintain 
 the struggle ? By conspiracy ? The preachers of 
 patience object, even as they object to insurrection. 
 By the printing press ? The governments kill it : you 
 have everywhere laws which fetter it, censors who vex 
 the writer, judges who condemn thought and shut it 
 within prison walls. Can you surmount these obstacles ? 
 In France, perhaps. But take the case of a country 
 absolutely without a Press ; without a Parliament or a 
 Council where politics may be discussed ; without 
 literary journals ; without a national theatre ; without 
 popular education ; without foreign books. Suppose 
 that country to suffer, suffer terribly, the upper and 
 middle classes as well as the mass of its people, from 
 poverty, from domestic and foreign oppression, from 
 constant violation of the national principle, and the 
 absence of all intellectual and industrial development. 
 What is that country to do? Whence can arise that 
 slow and gradual progress which you admire ? 
 
 And yet that country does exist. Its name is Italy, 
 Poland, and for some time, Germany. It embraces 
 nearly two-thirds of Europe. 
 
 Look at Italy ! 
 
 In her there is neither progress, nor any chance of 
 progress, save by revolution. Tyranny has raised an 
 impenetrable wall along her frontier. A triple army of 
 spies, of customs officers, and of constabulary ^ holds 
 
 ' See note to page 134.
 
 148 
 
 Faith and the Future 
 
 nightly and daily vigil to prevent the circulation of 
 thought. Mutual instruction ^ is prescribed. The , 
 universities are closed or enslaved. The penalty of 
 death hangs not only over those who print clandestinely, 
 but over those who possess or read the forbidden book. 
 
 The introduction of independent foreign newspapers 
 is forbidden. Intelligence perishes in infancy for lack 
 of nourishment. Young men sell their faith for self- 
 indulgence, or waste their strength in fits of barren 
 cynicism. They oscillate between Don Juan and 
 Timon. And privileged souls, souls afire for Right, 
 who for an instant caught glimpses of the Future, 
 when environment weighs heavy upon them, let their 
 light go out, and perish, without an object, without a 
 mission, like flowers unwatered or the Peri shorn of 
 her wings. Who, I ask again, shall give progress to 
 this people ? Who shall give it to Poland, who lies 
 in equal case ? Who shall give it to Germany, whose 
 lot will soon be the same, when, in obedience to your 
 counsels, her patriots have stayed the struggle which 
 peoples indeed the prisons, but awakens, little by little, 
 the masses ? How may we introduce into those 
 countries the undefined but sacred thought invoked by 
 all, if we are influenced by personal calculations, and 
 draw back in face of the danger, if we dare not with 
 arms in our hands, like the smugglers of the Pyrenees, 
 defend the contraband of the intellect ? 
 
 Insurrection : I see for those peoples no other 
 possible counsel : insurrection as soon as circumstances 
 allow : insurrection, strenuous, ubiquitous : the in- 
 surrection of the masses : the holy war of the op- 
 pressed : the republic to make republicans : the people 
 in action to initiate progress. Let the insurrection 
 announce with its awful voice the decrees of God : let 
 it clear and level the ground on which its own immortal 
 structure shall be raised. Let it, like the Nile, flood 
 all the country that it is destined to make fertile. We 
 speak here especially for those who lie at the base of 
 the European social system — -for those who wander in 
 
 ' i.e. — the Bell-Lancaster system of teaching
 
 Faith and the Future 149 
 
 darkness condemned to silence by a double tyranny, 
 while others more privileged can walk illumined by the 
 sun, and discern clearly the end of the common labour 
 — for enslaved races who for long centuries have sought 
 in vain the mission assigned to them by God — for 
 Poland, for Hungary, for Italy, for Spain, a country of 
 great destinies, to-day wasting its strength between two 
 systems, each one the translation of a false principle — 
 for Germany also, poor, sacred Germany, who awoke 
 us all with Luther's manly voice, for whom to-day we 
 can only show a sympathy so lukewarm as to show like 
 indifference. We speak for all, because all are in- 
 dispensable elements of the European commonweal 
 that is to be — because above and beyond the special 
 mission which each of us is called to fulfil on earth, 
 there is a common mission which embraces all Humanity 
 — because we fail to see that men have as yet duly 
 realised how essential it is that the republican Party 
 should be morally united by the apostolic power of the 
 written word, and that it is the written word which 
 determines the choice of the system round which all the 
 forces of the progressive press of Europe must rally. 
 We have men to-day, republican writers of merit, who 
 maintain that there is no light to guide the people to a 
 better land except it come from the hands of those who 
 hold watch and guard to keep them in the slough in 
 which they lie — others who are content to implore, 
 almost as an alms, some fraction of liberty for the 
 people — others who desire that European association 
 should ripen under the sun of constitutional monarchy, 
 who reject as dangerous any attempt at regeneration by 
 means of a great religious principle, who protest against 
 every bold movement of the people as inopportune and 
 ineffectual, against every really creative belief displayed 
 by the defenders of the people. And I protest against 
 the false theory, which confounds the material expression 
 of progress with progress itself, and redoubles, as it were, 
 the burdens of the peoples, by condemning them to an 
 initiation by degrees, parallel to the stages of suffering 
 they have passed through.
 
 150 Faith and the Future 
 
 No : those peoples will sink to the depths of hell in 
 their fall ; but if they rise, they will attain to heaven. 
 
 Nations are initiated into the worship of liberty by the 
 sufferings of servitude. They have endured beyond 
 words ; when they rise, they will grow, beyond all 
 imagination, to a giant's stature. Their grief was 
 blessed. Every tear taught them a truth. Every year 
 of martyrdom prepared them for an absolute redemp- 
 tion. They have drained the cup to the dregs. 
 Nothing is left to them but to dash it to pieces. 
 
 What, then, is to be done ? 
 
 (1) Preach ! fight! act ! 
 
 The republican Party must change neither attitude 
 nor language. Every modification introduced, for 
 dubious tactical reasons, into its conditions of life, 
 would bring it from its high estate to a mere political 
 party. Now, the republican Party is not a political 
 party : it is an essentially religious party. It has its 
 faith, its doctrine, its martyrs from Spartacus onwards ; 
 and it must have doctrine inviolable, authority infallible, 
 the martyr's spirit and call to self-sacrifice. Forgetful- 
 ness of this duty, imitation of the monarchy or 
 aristocracy, the substitution of negations for positive 
 beliefs, have often wrecked it. The Idea, the religious 
 thought, of which it is, even unconsciously, a manifesta- 
 tion on earth, has raised it to giant stature when all 
 men said that it had gone for ever. We must not forget 
 that political parties fall and die : religious parties never 
 die, except when the victory is won, when their vital 
 principle has attained its full development, and become 
 identified v.-ith the progress of civilisation and of morals. 
 Then, but not till then, in the heart of the people, or 
 in the brain of some individual, powerful by virtue of 
 genius and love, God plants a new thought, vaster and 
 more fruitful than that which is passing away ; the 
 centre of faith advances a step, and only those who 
 gather around it constitute the party of the future. 
 
 The republican Party need not fear for the final issue 
 of its mission, or be discouraged for temporary defeats 
 that do not affect the main body, and only concentrate
 
 Faith and the Future 151 
 
 around it the combatants who, in the heat of battle, have 
 strayed too far away ; or fear because at every turn nien 
 try to set up might for right, matter for spirit. The 
 danger is elsewhere. 
 
 Having regard to the essence of things, and without 
 reference to the passing hour or the men of our day, the 
 position of the republican Party is, by reason of the 
 recent persecutions, better than before. The law of 9th 
 of September,! which was to prove fatal to us, has given 
 representative monarchy its death-blow. It has settled 
 the eternal question between the citizen monarchy and 
 the dynastic opposition. It has discredited systems 
 which professed to reconcile the sovereignty of the 
 people and the irresponsibility of its deputies, continued 
 progress and the immobility of an hereditary power. It 
 has demonstrated the impotence of the doctrinaire and 
 destroyed political eclecticism. The period of transition, 
 which unnerved the combatants by deceptive hopes and 
 foolish terrors, is at an end. Slaves or victors : " To be 
 or not to be " : the question is now clearly stated in 
 these terms : we must choose between debasing our 
 nature and intelligence and become renegades to every 
 sacred idea, every powerful conception, or rising in open 
 war and appealing from the justice of kings to the justice 
 of peoples, to ihe judgment of God. The truce is broken 
 for ever. People and monarchy are to-day enemies, 
 enemies confessed and beyond recall. On one side 
 monarchy, its centuries of life in the past, its traditional 
 authority, its sicarii, its tax-gatherers, its constabulary - : 
 on the other, the people, its centuries in the future, its 
 instinct of new things, its immortal youth, its countless 
 hosts. The jousts are cleared for the two combatants. 
 The battle may begin at any moment. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " You are deceived, they tell us. " The peoples lack 
 faith. The masses lie torpid. So used are they to wear 
 chains that they have lost the habit of motion. You 
 
 ' See note to p. 126. See note to p. 134.
 
 152 Faith and the Future 
 
 have to do with helots, not with men. How will you 
 drag them to battle, and keep them in the field ? Many 
 a time have we called them to arms ; we have raised the 
 cry of ' people, liberty, vengeance ! ' and they lifted for a 
 moment their drowsy heads, and then fell back into their 
 old torpor. They saw the funeral procession of our 
 martyrs pass by, knew not that their rights, their life, 
 their salvation, were being buried with them. They 
 follow riches, and fear condemns them to stand still. 
 Enthusiasm is spent and cannot easily be rekindled. 
 Yet, without the masses you are powerless to act ; 
 you can face martyrdom, not gain the victory. Die 
 if you think that one day a generation of avengers 
 will spring from your blood, but do not involve in 
 your fate those who lack alike your strength and hope. 
 Martyrdom cannot be made the baptism of a whole 
 Party. It is useless to waste in abortive attempts forces 
 which one day may be effectively employed. Do not 
 delude yourselves about the times. Be resigned and 
 wait patiently." 
 
 The problem is a serious one. It involves the future 
 of the Party. 
 
 The peoples lack faith. But what^ effects should we 
 argue from this fact, and what are its causes ? Shall we 
 affirm a false identity between faith and power ? shall 
 we say that where faith is wanting the power to achieve 
 does not exist ; that to-day the people are impotent from 
 the very nature of things, that they have not suffered 
 enough, that the times are not ripe, that the atonement — 
 if indeed the peoples have aught to atone — is yet un- 
 accomplished ? 
 
 To accept such opinions would be to accept a system 
 of historical fatalism which the intelligence of the age has 
 rejected. We should make cowardly obeisance to a fact, 
 without any effort to explain it, and deny the innate 
 potentialities of humanity. The existence of a fact does 
 not prove its necessity : it can only govern the actions of 
 those who press materialism to its extremes and renounce 
 the study of causes to lie passive under their influence. 
 Will you deny to a man power to walk because he stands
 
 Faith and the Future 153 
 
 motionless before you ? The actual condition of things 
 is no measure of the forces which are latent in the peoples. 
 Are the peoples essentially weak, or do they simply lack 
 faith, that faith which reveals itself in deeds and sets 
 forces in motion? These are the true terms of the problem. 
 Yes ; the peoples lack faith ; not the individual faith, 
 which makes martyrs, but the common, 5^r/^i/ faith, which 
 gains victories ; the faith which awakens the multitudes ; 
 that faith in their destiny, in their mission, in the mission 
 of the Age, which illumines and rouses, prays and fights ; 
 which fearlessly advances along the paths of God and 
 Humanity, bearing in its right hand the people's sword, 
 in its heart the people's religion, in its soul the people's 
 future. But this faith which was preached by Lamennais," 
 the high priest of the age, and which should be translated 
 by others in the terms of their own national life, will it 
 come to us from our sense of strength or from our 
 conscience ? Is it an instinct of our real impotence that 
 has banished it from our lives, or is it opinions falsely 
 conceived, and prejudices that we can fight ? AVould not 
 one act of strenuous will suffice to restore the balance 
 between oppressor and oppressed ? And if this be so, 
 are we working to evoke it ? Are our tendencies, our 
 manifestations of the thought we would promote, sufficient 
 to achieve our purpose ? Are we impelled by fate to lead 
 the movement, or are the masses who follow us responsible 
 for the present sleep of death ? 
 
 Consider Italy. Misfortune, suffering, protests, in- 
 dividual sacrifice, have reached their extreme limit in 
 that land. The cup is full. Oppression, like the air, is 
 all-pervading : rebellion also. Three separate States, 
 twenty cities, two millions of men revolt in a week,^ over- 
 throw their governments and declare themselves emanci- 
 pated, and not a single protest was made, not a single 
 drop of blood was shed. Insurrections follow in quick 
 succession. Is force wanting to those twenty-five millions ? 
 Italy in revolution has strength enough to fight three 
 Austrias. Do they lack the inspiration of traditions, 
 the religion of memories, a storied past ? Nay, the people 
 
 ' See Appendix, p. 285.
 
 154 Faith and the Future 
 
 still bow before the holy relics of a greatness that was 
 once. Do they lack a mission ? Nay, Italy alone among 
 the nations has twice given the gospel of Unity to Europe. 
 Is courage wanting ? Ask of the days of 1746, of 1799 ; 
 of the memories of the Grande Annie \ of the martyrs, 
 thrice holy, who for fourteen years have died for an idea, 
 silent and inglorious. 
 
 Consider Switzerland. Can any one deny true valour, 
 the deep sense of independence, of those sons of the 
 Alps ? Five centuries of struggle, of intrigues, of civil 
 and religious strife, have failed to soil their flag of 1308 
 with foreign oppression. And yet Switzerland — that 
 Switzerland who defeated Austria in twenty battles, whose 
 war-cry would suffice to raise Germany and Italy in 
 insurrection, and who knows well how kings would pause 
 ere they embarked on a European war that the peoples 
 clamoured for, because they know that its last battle 
 would be the Waterloo of Monarchy — yet Switzerland to- 
 day, as the months come round, accepts dishonour and 
 bows her head before each petty dispatch of an Austrian 
 agent. 
 
 Remember 18 13 and the German youth who deserted 
 the lecture-rooms of the Universities to hasten to the 
 battles of Independence ; remember the thrill of excite- 
 ment at the cry of Nationality, Liberty, a common 
 Fatherland, which ran through Germany from one end to 
 the other, and then tell me if the Deputies, Electors, 
 public writers, and all the men of position who were 
 content to lose themselves in the maze of constitutional 
 opposition, if all these had rallied around the banner of 
 Hambach,^ whether that would not have sufficed to rouse 
 the whole people. 
 
 Remember Grochow, Waver, Ostrolenska,^ and then 
 tell me to what straits Russia would have been driven, if 
 Poland had wasted no precious time, begging help of the 
 
 ■ The Constitiitionsfest of 1832 at Hambach— a great popular demonstra- 
 tion in favour of Constitutional Reform held near the old castle of that 
 name. It was an echo of the French Revolution of July 1830, and was 
 attended by thousands of people from all parts of South-western Germany. 
 
 - Battles during the Polish Insurrection of 1S31. See Fyffe's History of 
 Modem Europe, Vol. II. c. v.
 
 Faith and the Future 155 
 
 diplomacy who had stabbed her for a hundred years ; if 
 her armies had at once shifted the active revolutionary 
 movement to its natural centre beyond the Boug ; if 
 some great conception of a people's freedom had called 
 to insurrection the races, whose true heart Bogdan 
 Chmielnicki revealed in 1648; if, while enthusiasm was 
 dictator, and terror paralysed the enemy, while the 
 masses of Lithuania, of Galicia, of Ucrania, were quivering 
 with hopes of liberty, the insurrection had flown from the 
 Belvedere to Lithuania. 
 
 I state with profound conviction, that there probably 
 does not exist a single people in Europe which is not 
 able by faith, by self-sacrifice, and by the logic of 
 revolution to break its chains in the face of monarchical 
 Europe conspiring to work its doom — not a people that 
 is not able through the holy creed of the Future and of 
 Love, through the mighty watchward inscribed on its 
 banner of insurrection, to start a crusade in Europe — no, 
 not a people which has not had its chance since 1830. 
 
 But in Italy, in Germany, in Poland, in Switzerland, 
 in France, everywhere, men, unfortunately influential, 
 have perverted the orginal character of the revolution — 
 ambitious and covetous men have seen in the uprising 
 of a people only a chance to slake their own thirst of 
 pelf or power — weak men who trembled at the ditificulties 
 of the undertaking, have, at the very onset, sacrificed the 
 logical development of insurrection to their own fears. 
 Everywhere false and deadly doctrines have turned 
 revolutions from their goal. The theory of class rule has 
 supplanted the people's theory of the emancipation of all 
 by efforts of all. The national idea has been weakened 
 or destroyed by the idea of foreign assistance. Nowhere 
 did the promoters and directors of the insurrection cast 
 into the scale of their country's destiny the sum-total 
 of the forces that a strenuous and inspired will would 
 have brought into play : nowhere have consciousness of 
 a high mission, faith in its fulfilment, and a knowledge 
 of the age and its dominant idea, guided the men who 
 assumed the control of events, and made themselves 
 responsible to humanity for their success.
 
 156 
 
 Faith and the Future 
 
 They had before them a task for giants, and they 
 grovelled on their bellies. They saw darkly the secret 
 of the generations ; they heard the cry of tribes of men 
 eager to shake off the dust of their sepulchres, and, youth- 
 ful or regenerate, confront a new life. It was their task 
 to publish, without fear, on the housetops the gospel of 
 the People and the Nations ; and instead, they stammered 
 halting words of royal concessions, of a charter, of com- 
 pacts between right and might, justice and injustice. 
 They tried, like old men whose natural force is spent, to 
 prolong an artificial existence, and sought in the policy of 
 the old regime the secret of its imperfect and fleeting life. 
 They mingled life and death, liberty and servitude, 
 privilege and equality, past and future. We were bound 
 — though even on their dead bodies — to raise the flag 
 of revolt so high that all nations might read on it a 
 promise of victory. And they dragged it through the 
 mire of royalty, overlaid it with protocols and nailed its 
 motionless folds, like the sign of a bawdy house, on the 
 doors of all the Foreign Legations : they believed in 
 the promises of every minister, in the hopes held out 
 by every Ambassador ; in everything, except in the 
 people and its omnipotence. We saw revolutionary 
 leaders immersed in the study of the treaties of 1815, 
 seeking therein, forsooth, the charter of Polish or Italian 
 liberty ; others more guilty, denied Humanity, and 
 made selfishness their God, when they wrote on their 
 banner a principle of no7i-interventio7i worthy of the 
 Middle Ages ; others, more guilty still, denied their 
 brothers and their Fatherland, broke up national unity 
 at the moment that they should have introduced its 
 triumph ; they uttered the impious words, " Men of 
 Bologna, the cause of the Modenese is not our cause," 
 even while the foreigner was advancing to their gates. 
 They all forgot — in their zgal to give, as they said, a 
 legal character to revolution — that every insurrection 
 acquires legality from its aim, legitimacy from victory, 
 means of defence from offence, pledges of success from 
 expansion : they forgot that the charter of each nation's 
 liberty is a clause in the Charter of Humanity, that they
 
 Faith and the Future 157 
 
 alone deserve to conquer who are prepared to conquer 
 or to die for all. 
 
 And then — seeing the men who started the revolu- 
 tions pale in front of their undertaking, retreat when 
 action became imperative, or take a devious and timid 
 path, without a goal, without a programme, without 
 hope except in foreign help, the people also were afraid 
 and paused, or rather perceived that the hour had not 
 yet come, and stopped short. With revolutions before 
 them betrayed in their inception, the masses abstained, 
 nascent enthusiasm was stifled, /a/M disappeared. 
 
 IV 
 
 Faith disappeared ; but what have we done, what 
 are we doing, to raise it up again ? Oh shame and woe 
 to us ! Since that holy light of the nations vanished, 
 we have been wandering in the darkness, without a 
 bond, without a purpose, without unity of direction ; 
 or have folded our arms upon our breasts like men 
 without hope. Some few lifted a long cry of anguish, 
 renounced all earthly progress, to croon a chant of 
 resignation, a death-bed prayer ^5 or they made them- 
 selves rebels against hope, ^ and with a bitter smile 
 proclaimed the advent of the powers of darkness : tbey 
 accepted scepticism, cynicism, faithlessness, as in- 
 evitable, irrevocable facts of human nature ; and the 
 echo of their blasphemies translated itself in degraded 
 natures into corruption, and in untainted natures into 
 the suicide of despair. ^ Our literature of to-day 
 oscillates between these extremes. Others, suddenly 
 remembering the light which illumined their infancy, 
 dragged themselves back to the sanctuary whence it 
 issued, and laboured to rekindle it ; ^ or were absorbed 
 in contemplation of self, and began to live in the ego, 
 and there forgetting or denying the world of phenomena, 
 never advanced beyond the study of the individual, 
 
 ' s.o-.— The German Romancists, and partly, Manzoni and Foscolo. 
 
 ■' e^g. — Byron. 
 
 = See Foscolo's_/aco/>o Ortis, a favourite book of Mazzini's. 
 
 * g.§-.— Chateaubriand, JManzoni, and, in his early days, Victor Hugo.
 
 158 
 
 Faith and the Future 
 
 And this is our philosophy. Others, finally, born for 
 battle, spurred by a passion of self-sacrifice, which, 
 under wise guidance, would have worked miracles, 
 dominated by sublime but imperfect and ill-defined 
 instincts, snatched a banner from their fathers' tombs, 
 and rushed forward ; but in the first few steps they 
 parted. Each of them tore a shred from the flag and 
 vaunted it as the flag of all the host. This is the 
 history of our political life. 
 
 We ask pardon of the reader for our insistence on 
 these complaints. They are our delenda Carthago. 
 Mine is not the work of a writer : it is the stern and 
 fearless mission of an apostle. This mission permits 
 of no diplomacy. I am investigating the causes of a 
 delay which seems to me to have its source outside the 
 hostile forces. I seek a way of stating the problem in 
 such terms as may permit us quickly to win back the 
 power of making a new departure. Therefore I must 
 be silent or speak the whole truth. 
 
 Now, it seems to me that the delay has two chief 
 causes, both due to the Party wandering from its goal, 
 both tending to substitute the worship of the past for 
 the worship of the future. 
 
 The first of these causes has led us to mistake for a 
 programme what was nothing more than a concluding 
 chapter, a powerful summary, a formula which gave 
 expression to the work of a whole age and its conquests. 
 It has made us confound two distinct philosophies 
 of life and two distinct ages, and reduce a mission of 
 social regeneration to the narrow proportions of a work 
 of development and deduction from old premisses. It 
 has caused us to abandon the principle for its symbol, 
 God for an idol ; to stay the soul's flight towards a 
 New Ideal, that fiery cross that is transmitted by the 
 hand of God from one people to another ; to degrade 
 and smother the national spirit of the peoples, which 
 is their life, their mission and the strength given for 
 its achievement, the part assigned to them by God in 
 the common task, in the development of thought one 
 and manifold, which is the soul of our life on earth.
 
 Faith and the Future 159 
 
 (2) The second cause has led us to confound the principle 
 with one of its manifestations, the eternal element of 
 every social organisation with one of its successive 
 developments, and to consider a mission as completed 
 which was only expanding and, in consequence, changing 
 its character. Because of that error we broke up the 
 unity of the conception precisely when it required a wider 
 development; we travestied the function of the eighteenth 
 century ; we made a negation the starting-point of the 
 nineteenth, and abandoned religious thought when it 
 was more than ever necessary to revive and to extend 
 it till it embraced every element that is destined to be 
 transformed, and to gather together in one great social 
 conception all the truths that to-day lie unrelated and 
 apart. 
 
 V 
 
 The eighteenth century, which is too generally regarded 
 as a century of scepticism and negations, devoted entirely 
 to a task of criticism, had its faith, its mission, and 
 practical schemes to fulfil it. It was a titanic, boundless 
 faith in human liberty and power. Its mission was to 
 tabulate — if the expression be permissible — the assets of 
 the first Epoch of the European world : to epitomise and 
 reduce to a concrete formula that which eighteen cen- 
 turies of Christianity had examined, developed, made a 
 fact : to constitute the individual as he was called to be, 
 free, active, sacred, inviolable : that was its mission. 
 And achieved it by the French Revolution, a translation 
 into political terms of the (3.) protestant revolution, a 
 deeply religious manifestation, whatever superficial 
 writers may think who judge the whole period by the 
 aberrations of a few individuals, secondary actors in the 
 drama. The instrument employed to effect the revolu- 
 tion and to achieve its mission was Right. Its power, its 
 mandate, the legitimacy of its actions, lay in a theory 
 of Rights : its supreme formula was a Declaration of 
 Rights. What else, in fact, is viati, the individual, save 
 Right ? Does he not, within the ever-advancing bound- 
 aries of progress, represent the human person and the
 
 i6o Faith and the Future 
 
 element of individual freedom ? And the aim of the 
 eighteenth century was precisely to complete that hiiman 
 evolution which was foreseen by the ancients, announced 
 by Christianity, and attained in part by protestantism. 
 Between the century and that aim stood a multitude of 
 obstacles ; fetters of all kinds on free spontaneity, on 
 the free devolopment of individual faculties ; warnings, 
 rules, and orders, that limited human action ; the 
 traditions of a force that was spent ; aristocracies which 
 seemed capable and strong ; religious forms that forbade 
 progress. It was necessary to overthrow them all, and 
 the century overthrew them. It fought a long and 
 terrible but victorious battle against every influence 
 that frittered human power into disconnected fragments, 
 that denied progress or stayed the flight of intellect. 
 Every great revolutionary thought needs an ideal for its 
 centre of action, its fulcrum. This ideal the century 
 found by subjectively centring itself in the individual ; and 
 it was the ego, the human conscience, the " I am " ^ 
 of Christ to the Powers of His day. Centred in that 
 conception, the Revolution, conscious of its own strength 
 and sovereignty by right of conquest, disdained to prove 
 to the world its origin, its roots in the past. First it 
 professed its faith. It cried like Fichte : " Liberty ! 
 without Equality there is no Liberty ; all men are equal." 
 Then it proceeded to deny. It denied the dead past : 
 it denied feudalism, aristocracy, monarchy. It denied 
 the (4.) Catholic dogma, a dogma of absolute resignation, 
 that poisoned the springs of liberty and planted despotism 
 at the summit of its structure. Unnumbered wrecks 
 strewed the ground. But in the midst of them, amid 
 all those negations, a mighty Yea arose — the creature 
 of God ready to act, radiant with power and will — 
 the ecce homo, repeated after eighteen centuries of 
 suffering and strife, not by the voice of the martyr, 
 but on the altar raised by the revolution to victory 
 — Right, itidividual faith, rooted in the world for ever. 
 
 Is this all we seek ? Should man, endowed with 
 power to progress, idly repose like an emancipated slave 
 
 ' John viii. 5S.
 
 Faith and the Future i6i 
 
 content with his own solitary liberty ? Does nothing 
 remain, to fulfil his mission on the earth, but to carry 
 the principle to its logical conclusions, to translate them 
 into facts, and to defend the ground we have won, but 
 advance no further ? 
 
 Is the series of terms which make the great equation 
 closed because the human unknoivn quantity is known, 
 because one of the terms of progress, that which con- 
 stitutes the individual, can be placed among quantities 
 that are kfiotun and defined ? Is the faculty of pro- 
 gress exhausted ? Is no movement possible but in a 
 circle ? 
 
 Because man, consecrated by thought to the kingdom 
 of the world, has broken through an outworn form of 
 religion that imprisoned his activity and denied him 
 independence, shall we never more possess a bond of 
 common brotherhood, or religion, or conception of 
 universal Providential law that all may take and believe ? 
 
 No, eternal God ! Thy word is not finished ; Thy 
 thought, the thought of the world, is not yet all re- 
 vealed. It still creates, and will continue to create, 
 for long ages beyond all human calculation. The 
 ages that have run their course have only revealed to 
 us a few fragments. Our mission is not ended. We 
 scarcely know its origin ; we know nothing of its final 
 e?id: time and our discoveries do but extend its confines. 
 It ascends from century to century, towards destinies 
 unknown to us : it seeks its own law, of which we possess 
 but the first few lines. From initiative to initiative 
 through the series of Thy successive incarnations it 
 purifies and extends the formula of self-sacrifice : pursues 
 its own path : learns thy ever-widening law. Forms are 
 altered and dissolved. Religions die. The human spirit 
 leaves them behind, as the wayfarer leaves the fires that 
 warmed him in the night, and goes in search of other Suns, 
 But Religion remains. Thought is immortal ; it survives 
 all forms, and is born again from its own ashes. The idea 
 frees itself from the shrunken symbol, escapes from the 
 chrysalis which prisoned it, which criticism had eaten 
 through. It shines forth pure and bright, a new star
 
 1 62 Faith and the Future 
 
 in the firmament of Humanity. How many has faith 
 yet to add that the whole way of the future may be 
 illumined ? Who can say how many stars, thoughts 
 of the ages, have yet to rise in cloudless splendour 
 and shine in the firmament of mind, that man may 
 become a living epitome of the Word on the earth, 
 and may say to himself, " I have faith in myself ; my 
 destiny is accomplished " ? 
 
 This is the Law. One task succeeds to another ; one 
 ideal of life to another. And for us the one that pre- 
 cedes us directs our task and declares its method and 
 order. It includes all the terms that the earlier systems 
 have won, and adds the new one which becomes the end 
 and aim of all our efforts, the unknown quantity that we 
 have to solve. Criticism, too, has its work, but finds its 
 performance in the positive belief of the age. Criticism, 
 in fact, lives only a borrowed life ; it exists only in 
 phenomena ; it draws from other sources its purpose, 
 mission, standard. A part of every age, it is the banner 
 of none. The ^ thinker who divides Epochs into organic 
 and critical falsifies History. Every Epoch is essentially 
 synthetic and organic. The progressive evolution of 
 thought, of which our world is the visible manifestation, 
 takes place by continual expansion. The chain cannot 
 be broken. The diverse aitns are bound together. The 
 cradle is linked to the tomb. 
 
 VI 
 
 Thus, scarcely had the French Revolution concluded 
 one Epoch, when the first rays of another appeared on 
 the horizon ; scarcely had the human individual, with 
 the charter of rights in his hand, proclaimed his triumph, 
 when human thought presented another charter, that of 
 principles. Scarcely was the unknoivn quantity of the so- 
 called Middle Ages solved, and the great purpose of the 
 (5.) Christian system attained, when another miknoivn 
 quantity asked solution of the present generation, another 
 aim called for its efforts. On every side men were ask- 
 
 ' The St. Simonian.
 
 Faith and the Future 163 
 
 ing : What is the end of liberty, or of equality, which in 
 its ultimate analysis is only the liberty of all ? The free 
 man is only an active force ready to work. In what 
 manner shall it work ? Capriciously ? In every direction 
 that presents itself? That is not life, rather a simple 
 sequence of acts, of phenomena, of symptoms of vitality, 
 without connection or relation, or continuity : its name is 
 anarchy. The liberty of one will inevitably clash with 
 the liberty of another ; we shall have continually shock 
 and counter-shock among individuals, waste of force and 
 useless dissipation of that productive faculty within 
 which should be held sacred. The liberty of all, without 
 a common law to direct it, leads to a war of all, the more 
 inexorably cruel, the more the individual combatants are 
 equally matched. And men imagined they had found 
 the remedy when they had disinterred from the foot of 
 the cross of Christ — that cross which dominates a whole 
 age in the history of the world — the phrase of brotherhood 
 which the Man-God when dying had left to the human 
 race : a sublime word unknown to the pagan world, 
 through which the Christian world had, often uncon- 
 sciously, fought many a holy battle from the Crusades to 
 Lepanto. They wrote it on all their banners, and with 
 its sister watch-words, liberty and equality, it formed the 
 programme of the future. Then they tried to restrain 
 progress within the circle marked out by those three 
 points. But progress burst through the ring. Once 
 again the eternal " cui borio " appeared. We all in fact 
 demand an aim, a hionan aim : what else is existence 
 but an end with means calculated to attain it ? And 
 brotherhood does not include a common social ideal for 
 men on earth : it does not include even its necessity : it 
 has no essential necessary relation to the development of 
 a purpose, that shall bind together in harmony all our 
 faculties and powers. Brotherhood is certainly the base 
 of every society, the first condition of social progress, but 
 it is not progress itself. It makes progress possible, it 
 supplies it vvith a necessary constituent, but it does not 
 define it. The principle of brotherhood is compatible 
 with movement in a circle. And the human mind began
 
 164 
 
 Faith and the Future 
 
 to understand that brotherhood — the necessary Hnk 
 between two principles of liberty and equality, that 
 epitomise the individualistic philosophy — never passes 
 beyond their limits, that its activity can only operate 
 between individuals, that it easily assumes the name of 
 charity, that though it can fix the starting-point whence 
 Humanity shall reach the social Ideal, it can never be 
 substituted for it. 
 
 The quest was pursued further. We saw darkly that 
 the end, the function of existence, must also be the final 
 goal of that progressive development which constitutes 
 existence itself ; that hence in order to make straight and 
 swift for this e7id, it was necessary to know exactly the 
 nature of such progression and bring our actions into 
 harmony with it. To uttderstand the Law and to regulate 
 our work in accordance with it, is the true way to state 
 the problem. Now the law of the individual can only 
 be discovered in the species. The mission of the indi- 
 vidual can only be learnt and defined from an elevation 
 which commands the whole field. Hence to know even 
 the law of the individual it is necessary to ascend. Only 
 from a conception of Humanity can we deduce the 
 secret, the standard, the law of life for man. Hence the 
 necessity for the co-operation of all, for harmony in 
 our labours, in a word, for association, in order that the 
 work of all (6.) may be accomplished ; hence also the 
 need for a thorough change in the organisation of 
 the revolutionary Party, in theories of government, in the 
 study of philosophy, politics, and economics, all of which 
 have been till now inspired by the sole principle of 
 liberty. The horizon has changed. The sacred word 
 Humanity, uttered with new significance, has discovered 
 to the eye of Genius a new world, which hitherto had 
 been no more than a presentiment ; a new Age has 
 begun. 
 
 Do we need a book to prove it ? Do we need time 
 for the principle to develop in order to demonstrate that 
 such is really the present intellectual movement, that the 
 century is labouring in search of its own philosophy of 
 life ? Have we not seen, for a period of nearly twenty
 
 Faith and the Future 165 
 
 years, all the schools of philosophy occupying themselves, 
 even when they stray back to the past, in the search after 
 a great unk7ioivn ? Is not this confessed almost despite 
 themselves by those who would gain most by diverting 
 men from the end ? We see to-day a Catholicism that 
 attempts to reconcile Gregory VII. with Luther, the 
 papacy with the free and independent human soul. We 
 have a retrograde and hypocritical party, that gropes 
 dubiously among theories of government, and a stammer- 
 ing mystic kind of Jesuitism, which sacrilegiously mutters 
 the name of social party. And daily we hear the word 
 Humanity on the lips of materialists, ^ who cannot under- 
 stand its worth, and who betray every moment their 
 natural affinities to the individualism of the Empire. 
 Whether as a heartfelt belief, or homage given perforce, 
 the new Age has won its rights over nearly all 
 intellects. Some of the perfervid apostles of progress 
 were not long since complaining that the hostile camp 
 had pirated our words without even understanding their 
 significance ; it was a puerile complaint. It is just in 
 this very accord, instinctive and unwilling as it is, that 
 we find a potent mark of the Word of our Age, 
 Humanity. 
 
 Now, every Age has its own peculiar faith. Every 
 system includes the conception of an ideal and a mission. 
 And every mission has its own instrument, its own forces, 
 its own lever. Any attempt to translate into facts the 
 mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can 
 only end in an indetinite series of abortive efforts. 
 Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the 
 means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, 
 but never lead to victory. 
 
 And this is the point we have reached. All our hearts 
 and intellects have the presentiment of a great Age ; 
 and yet we would give it, for the ensign of its faith, mere 
 criticism and the negations with which the eighteenth 
 century was forced to surround its new conquest of 
 liberty. We mutter by God's inspiration the sublime 
 words, regeneration, progress, a new mission, the future ; 
 
 ' St. Simonians
 
 1 66 Faith and the Future 
 
 and yet, when we try to realise the programme they 
 contain, we obstinately use the weapons of a mission 
 that is dead. We invoke a social world, a vast harmonious 
 organisation of the forces which are seething confusedly 
 in this vast workshop we call earth ; and to call that new 
 world into life, to lay the foundations of a peaceful 
 organisation, we hark back to old habits of rebellion, 
 that waste our strength within the circle of individualism. 
 We raise the cry of " the future ! " with the wrecks of old 
 systems all about us. Though our chains are lengthened, 
 we are prisoners still, and we brag of our liberty because 
 we are free to move round the post to which our chains 
 are fastened. 
 
 And because of this, faith slumbers in the hearts ot 
 the peoples : because of this not even the blood of a 
 whole nation can revive it. 
 
 VII 
 
 Faith requires a purpose that shall embrace the 
 whole of life, that shall concentrate all its manifesta- 
 tions and direct its diverse modes, or subordinate them 
 to the controlling activity of a single one : it requires 
 a fervid, unshaken belief that that purpose shall be 
 attamed ; the profound conviction of a mission and 
 the obligation to fulfil it ; finally, the consciousness of 
 a supreme power that guards the believer's progress to 
 his goal. These are the indispensable elements : and 
 where any one is wanting, we may have a sect, a school, 
 a political party ; not a faith, nor an hourly self-sacrifice 
 for the sake of a high religious ideal. 
 
 But we have no definite religious ideal, or deep 
 conviction of the duty implied in a mission, or the 
 consciousness of a supreme and protecting authority. 
 Our apostolate to-day is an opposition of criticism. 
 We fight by appealing to selfish interests, and our 
 weapon is a theory of rights. We are all, sublime 
 presentiments notwithstanding, children of rebellion. 
 We move, like renegades, without God, without Law, 
 without a banner which shall beckon to the future.
 
 Faith and the Future 167 
 
 The old aim has disappeared : the new one, which, 
 for an instant we dimly saw, is annulled by the doctrine 
 of rights, that alone directs our labours. For us the 
 individual is at once eiid and means. We use the 
 essentially religious phrase, Humanity, and banish 
 religion from all our works. We look only at the 
 political side of things. We talk of harmonising human 
 faculties, and neglect the most obvious and active 
 element of human nature. We are bold enough not to 
 shrink from the dream of a material European unity, 
 and yet we thoughtlessly break up its moral unity by 
 ignoring the fundamental conditions of all association 
 — uniformity of belief and of religious sanction. In the 
 midst of such contradictions we attempt, forsooth, to 
 make a new world. 
 
 Nor do I exaggerate. I know the exceptions and 
 admire them. But the Party, speaking generally, is such 
 as I describe it. Its presentiments, its aspirations, belong 
 to the new Age : the characteristics of its organisation 
 and the means it proposes to adopt, belong to the old. 
 The Party has long divined the mission entrusted to it, 
 but without understanding its character or the machinery 
 adapted to its fulfilment. Hence it is powerless to 
 succeed, and will be, until the day come, when it shall 
 understand that the cry " God wills it " is the eternal 
 cry of every movement which has, like ours, self-sacrifice 
 for its foundation, the peoples for its instrument, 
 Humanity for its end. 
 
 ^Vhat ! You complain that faith is dead or dying ! 
 you lament that souls are scorched with the breath of 
 egotism— and yet you mock at belief, and proclaim in 
 your pages that religion no longer exists ; that its day is 
 past, and the religious future of the peoples for ever 
 closed ! You marvel that the masses advance but slowly 
 along the path of self-sacrifice and association, and in 
 the meantime you lay down as your principle a theory of 
 individualism that has only a negative value ; a theory 
 that results not in association, but in loose concourses of 
 human atoms, and which in ultimate analysis is only 
 egotism draped in the mantle of philosophical formulas.
 
 1 68 Faith and the Future 
 
 Your purpose should be a work of regeneration, of moral 
 reform — for without this any political organisation is 
 barren — and you delude yourselves with expectations of 
 success while you banish from your work the religious 
 idea. 
 
 Politics deal with men where and as they are : they 
 define their tendencies and regulate their actions in 
 accordance with them. It is only religious thought that 
 can transfigure both. 
 
 Religious thought is the breath of life of Humanity : 
 at once its life and soul, its spirit and its outward sign. 
 Humanity exists only in the consciousness of its own 
 origin, and the presentiment of its own destinies. It 
 reveals itself only when it concentrates its forces on 
 some point between the two. Now this is precisely 
 the function of the religious idea. That idea establishes 
 a belief in the common origin of all ; it places before us, 
 as an article of belief, a common future ; it concentrates 
 all the active faculties round a central point, from which 
 they move on unceasingly in the direction of that future ; 
 it directs all the forces latent in the human soul to its 
 attainment. It comprehends life in all its aspects ; in 
 its every manifestation, however minute ; it breathes 
 good wishes over the cradle and the tomb ; supplies, in 
 philosophic language, the higher and most general 
 formula of a given Epoch of civilisation, the simplest 
 and most comprehensive expression of its knozvkdge, 
 the common principle which governs the whole, and 
 controls all its successive evolutions. That idea is, for 
 the individual, the symbol of the relation that exists 
 between him and the Age to which he belongs, the 
 revelation of his function, and standard of conduct.; 
 the flag that makes him able to fulfil his mission. That 
 idea elevates and purifies the individual ; dries up the 
 springs of egotism, by changing and removing outside 
 himself the centre of activity. It creates for man that 
 theory oi duty which is the mother of self-sacrifice, which 
 ever was, and ever will be, the inspirer of great and 
 noble things ; a sublime theory, that draws man near 
 to God, borrows from the divine nature a spark of
 
 Faith and the Future 169 
 
 omnipotence, crosses at one leap all obstacles, makes 
 the martyr's scaffold a ladder to victory, and is as 
 superior to the narrow, imperfect theory of rights as the 
 law is superior to one of its corollaries. (7,) 
 
 Right is the faith of the individual : Duty is the 
 common, collective faith. Right can only organise 
 resistance ; destroy, not found. Duty builds up and 
 associates ; it springs from a general law, whereas Right 
 has its origin only in individual will. Hence nothing 
 prevents attacks on rights : every injured individual may 
 rebel against them ; and force alone is the supreme 
 arbiter between the antagonists. This, in fact, was the 
 reply that societies founded upon rights often made to 
 their enemies. Now societies that make duty their basis 
 would not be driven to use force ; once admit the 
 principle of duty, and the possibility of strife has gone, 
 the individual is made subordinate to the common aim, 
 and thus duty cuts at the very root of the evil for which 
 right has only palliatives. Moreover, the doctrine of 
 rights does not include progress as a necessary element : 
 it admits it merely as a simple fact. The exercise of 
 rights being necessarily optional, progress is abandoned 
 to the caprice of a liberty without rule or purpose. And 
 Right kills self-sacrifice, and banishes martyrdom from 
 the world. In every theory of individual rights, material 
 interests alone dominate and martyrdom becomes absurd : 
 what interests can exist beyond the tomb ? But for all 
 that, martyrdom is often the baptism of a world, the 
 solemn initiation of progress. Every doctrine that does 
 not rest on progress as an essential law of its being is 
 inferior to the ideal and to the needs of the Age. And 
 yet, the doctrine of rights even to-day reigns sovereign 
 among us ; it rules that republican party which announces 
 itself as the advanced party in Europe : and yet — for it 
 matters litde if our lips instinctively utter the words, 
 duty, self-sac7-ifice, mission — the liberty of the republicans 
 is merely a theory of resistance : their religion, if indeed 
 they mention it, only expresses the relation between God 
 and the individual : the political order they invoke and 
 honour by the name of social is only a series of prohibitions
 
 lyo Faith and the Future 
 
 promoted into laws, which ensure to each the power of 
 pursuing his own aim, his own interests, his own ten- 
 dencies : their delinition of Law does not go beyond the 
 expression of the general will : their formula of association 
 is the Society of Rights : their creed does not pass beyond 
 the limits laid down nearly half a century ago in a 
 Declaration of Rights, by a man who was himself the 
 incarnation of the struggle : their theories of Authority 
 are theories of mistrust : their organic problem — an old 
 remnant of a patched-up constitutionalism — is reduced to 
 finding a point around which individualism and association, 
 liberty and general law, may oscillate for ever in barren 
 antagonism : their people is often a caste — the most 
 numerous, it is true, and the most useful — in open 
 rebellion against other castes in order to enjoy in its 
 turn the rights that God intends for all : their republic 
 is the turbulent, intolerant democracy of Athens (8.) : 
 their war-cry is a cry of vengeance : their symbol, 
 Spartacus. 
 
 Now, this is the eighteenth century once more, its 
 philosophy, its theory of mankind, its materialistic polity, 
 its analysis, its protestant criticism, its sovereignty of the 
 individual, its rejection of an old religious formula, its 
 mistrust of all authority, its spirit of strife and eman- 
 cipation. It is the French Revolution over again ; the 
 past with some new glimpses of the future ; servitude to 
 old things surrounded by the prestige of youth. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The past is fatal to us. The French Revolution, I 
 state with conviction, is crushing us. It weighs almost 
 like an incubus upon our heart and impedes its action. 
 We are dazzled by the splendour of its gigantic struggles, 
 fascinated by its victorious glance, and so remain to-day 
 still prostrate before it. We expect everything, both in 
 men and things, from its programme ; we attempt to copy 
 Robespierre and St. Just, and search in the records of the 
 Clubs of 1792 or 1793 names for the sections of 1833 or 
 1834. Now, while we are aping our fathers we forget
 
 Faith and the Future 171 
 
 that our fathers aped no one, and were great because 
 of this. Their inspirations flowed from contemporary 
 sources, from the needs of the masses, from the nature 
 of their environment. And precisely because the 
 instrument they employed was adapted to the purpose 
 they had in view, they worked miracles. Why do we not 
 act as they did ? Why, while studying and respecliiig 
 tradition, should we not move onward ? We ought to 
 worship the greatness of our fathers, and seek in their 
 tombs a pledge of the future, not the future itself. The 
 future is before us, and God, the father of all revelations 
 and all ages, alone can point out the infinite way. 
 
 Up, then ! and let us be great in our turn. For this, it 
 is necessary to understand our mission in its fulness. 
 We stand to-day between two ages, between the grave 
 of one world and the cradle of another, between the last 
 boundary of the individualistic philosophy and the 
 threshold of Humanity. With eyes fixed on the future, 
 we must break the last links of the chain which holds us 
 in bondage to the past, and with deliberate stages move 
 on. We have freed ourselves from the abuses of the old 
 world : we must now free ourselves from its glories. The 
 task of the eighteenth century is accomplished. Our 
 fathers repose tranquil and proud in their tombs. They 
 sleep, like warriors after battle, wrapped in their flag. 
 Fear not that you will grieve them. The red banner of 
 the blood of Christ which Luther handed on to the 
 Convention,^ to be planted on the slain in twenty battles 
 of the peoples, is a trophy sacred to us all.' None will 
 dare to touch it. But let us advance in the name of 
 God. We will return hereafter to lay at its foot, there 
 where our fathers lie, some of the laurels that our own 
 hands have won. To-day we have to found the polity 
 of the nineteenth century, to climb through philosopiiy 
 to faith ; to define and organise association, proclaim 
 HuMANiTV, initiate the new Age. The old Age can 
 attain its actual fulfilment only in the baptism of the 
 new. 
 
 These things are perhaps not new. I know this and 
 
 ' The French National Convention of 1793.
 
 172 Faith and the Future 
 
 confess it gladly. My voice is but one among many 
 that preach nearly the same ideas, and proclaim associa- 
 tion as the fundamental principle that must henceforth 
 direct our political work. Many powerful intellects have 
 condemned the cold doctrine of rights wherever they 
 have found it alone and disconnected, condemned it as 
 the last formula of individualism, to-day degenerating 
 into sheer materialism : many schools, some extinct, 
 some still active, invoke duty as an anchor of salvation 
 for a society tormented by fruitless desires. Why, then, 
 do I insist on protesting against their want of fore- 
 sight ? What does it matter if the end preached be the 
 centre of a new programme, or only the development of 
 the old ; if men whose cry, like ours, vi forward ! persist 
 in confounding association with fraternity, or Humanity 
 — the compendium of all human faculties organised to 
 one end — with more liberty and equality for all ? Why 
 proclaim a new Age, and so involve ourselves in all the 
 difficulties of a fresh task ? 
 
 Is, then, our contest one of names alone ? 
 
 I think not. 
 
 It is important to proclaim a new Age : to affirm 
 that all we preach to-day on earth is verily a new pro- 
 gramme ; and, for this reason, that it is bound to be 
 henceforth universally recognised. 
 
 We desire not only to think, but to act. We desire 
 not only the freeing of one people, and of others through 
 it, but the freeing of all the peoples through their 
 own efforts. Now, conscience alone frees the peoples. 
 They will act only when they recognise a new ideal 
 whose attainment demands the exertions of all, the 
 equality of all, and a new departure. Without such 
 recognition, there is no hope of faith, of self-sacrifice, 
 of enthusiasm mighty to work. The peoples who lie 
 crushed by the burden of the earlier movement will 
 lightly surrender the accomplishment of the new one to 
 the nation that has taken the responsibility, and therewith 
 the glory. They will be content to follow from afar, and 
 ask no more. And if through causes unknown to them 
 that people shall halt on the way, they will halt with it.
 
 Faith and the Future 173 
 
 And then we shall have silence, inaction, suspended life. 
 This is the spectacle that, while I write, the whole of 
 Europe presents. 
 
 The ideal of a new Age, which includes a new 
 end to be attained, gives the initiative to the future, 
 and kindles the universal conscience into life. By 
 it we learn to start afresh and not to copy ; we work 
 out our own mission, not execute another's ; we put 
 Europe in the stead of France. We furnish a potent 
 element to feed revolutionary activity. By proclaiming 
 a new Age we proclaim the existence of a new philosophy 
 of life, a general conception destined to embrace all the 
 terms of earlier philosophies with yet one more ; and, 
 working from that new term, we co-ordinate all the his- 
 torical series, all the facts that are grouped around it, all 
 the manifestations of life, all the aspects of the human 
 problem, all the branches of human knowledge. We give 
 a second, a new impulse to the labour of the intellect. 
 We proclaim the need of a new encyclopedia, which shall 
 summarise all the progress we have made, and in itself 
 be one step forward more. We place outside controversy 
 all the aims which formed the purpose of past revolu- 
 tions, the liberty, the equality, the fraternity of men and 
 of peoples ; we put them in the list of undisputed truths. 
 We part for ever from the exclusively mdividtialist Age, 
 and with greater reason, from that individualism which 
 is the materialism of that age. We block the roads to 
 the past. 
 
 And finally, by that affirmation we reject every 
 doctrine of eclecticism and transition, every imperfect 
 and issueless phrase that states a problem without 
 attempting to solve it. We part from every school that 
 tries to reconcile life and death, and to reform the world 
 by an extinct philosophy. We bind God Himself surety 
 for the sacred doctrine of the people, and its sovereignty. 
 We place, in the very stamp of the age, a new tide 
 to universal suffrage. We raise politics to a philoso- 
 phical conception. We establish an apostolate of 
 Humanity, by vindicating that common right of nations 
 which should be the symbol of our creed. We consecrate
 
 174 Faith and the Future 
 
 those spontaneous, sudden, collective movements of the 
 peoples, whose work it is to proclaim the new Ideal 
 of life, and translate it into action. We lay the corner- 
 stone of a Humanitarian Faith, to which the republican 
 Party must rise, if it still wish to conquer. Therefore it 
 is that every Age has its baptism of faith ; ours still lacks 
 it, and we can, if nothing more, prepare the way, and 
 make ourselves its heralds. 
 
 IX 
 
 Ours is therefore no idle contest of words. The 
 triumph or the failure of the cause we uphold depends 
 upon the road which the Party takes. 
 
 We fell as a political party : we must rise again as a 
 religious party. 
 
 The religious element is universal and immortal : it 
 binds men together in a universal brotherhood. Every 
 great revolution is marked with its imprint, and reveals 
 it in its origin and aim. Heralds of a new world, 
 we must found a moral unity, the Catholicism of 
 Humanity. And we move encouraged by the holy 
 promise of Jesus : we seek the new Gospel, of which He 
 left us, ere He died, the immortal hope, and of which the 
 Christian Gospel is the germ, as man is the germ of 
 Humanity. On the soil fertilised by fifty generations of 
 martyrs, we hail with Lessing that immensity of future 
 which finds its fulcrum in the Fatherland, and its goal in 
 Humanity. Then shall the peoples make a common 
 covenant, and define in brotherly compact each one's 
 mission in the future, the office which devolves on each in 
 the general association, which owns one Law, one God for 
 all. It is for us to hasten the moment when the Revolu- 
 tion, the tocsin of the peoples, shall call together a new 
 Convention, that shall be a true Council of the faithful. 
 Therefore our war must needs be a holy crusade. Let 
 God shine on our banner, as on our destinies. Raise 
 we on the old world's wreck an altar where the people 
 may burn the incense of reconciliation. And know we 
 all at least what answer to make to Him who would
 
 Faith and the Future 175 
 
 ask of us : Whence come ye ? In whose name do ye 
 preach ? 
 
 Often have I heard such questions. Often has it 
 been said of our httle band of apostles : " The re- 
 publicans have no philosophic basis, no indisputable 
 principle, as the fountain of their creed." The accusers, 
 it is true, were men who think they have a philosophy 
 because some among their followers have made a 
 collection of philosophies, a religion because they have 
 priests, a political doctrine because they have soldiers 
 and grapeshot. None the less the charge was taken up 
 by men of good faith, who could not fail to note in our 
 ranks a visible lack of unity or of a harmonious 
 philosophy ; an absence of religious belief that could 
 not be easily reconciled with the social and essentially 
 religious end that republicanism now and again pro- 
 claims. 
 
 Now, we are able to reply : We come in the name of 
 God and of Humanity. 
 
 We believe in one God, author of all that exists, the 
 living absolute Thought, of which our world is a ray and 
 the Universe an incarnation. 
 
 We believe in one Law, general and immutable, that 
 constitutes our mode of existence, that embraces every 
 series of possible phenomena, and exercises a continuous 
 influence upon the universe, and on all it contains, both 
 in its physical and in its moral aspect. 
 
 Since every Imv requires an end to be attained, we 
 believe in the progressive development in all existing 
 things, of faculties and forces — which are faculties in 
 motion — towards that unknown end, without which law 
 would be useless and existence unintelligible. 
 
 And since every laiv is interpreted and verified in its 
 own subject, we believe in Humanity, a collective and 
 continuous Being, in which is epitomised the whole 
 ascending series of organic creations, and in which, as 
 the sole interpreter of the law, is most fully manifested 
 God's thought on earth. 
 
 We believe, that inasmuch as harmony between the 
 subject and the law is the condition of all normal
 
 176 
 
 Faith and the Future 
 
 existence, the manifest and immediate end of all our 
 labours is to effect the greater completion and security 
 of that harmony, through the fuller discovery of the law 
 and its realisation in its subject. 
 
 We believe in Association — which is but the active 
 belief in one God, in one Law, in one End — as the 
 only means possessed by us to realise Truth, as the 
 method of progress, as the only existing road to perfec- 
 tion, so that the higher the scale of human progress the 
 more embracing may be its corresponding formula of 
 association won for men, and applied to their life. 
 
 We believe therefore in the Holy Alliance of the 
 Peoples as the broadest formula of association possible 
 in our age — in the liberty and equality of the peoples, 
 without which association has no true life — in Nationality, 
 which is the conscience of the peoples, which assigns to 
 them their share of work in the association, their office 
 in Humanity, and hence constitutes their mission on 
 earth, their individuality ; for without Nationality neither 
 Hberty nor equality is possible — and we believe in the 
 holy Fatherland, that is, the cradle of nationality, the 
 altar and patrimony of the individuals that compose each 
 people. 
 
 And since the Law is one, since it governs equally 
 the two aspects, internal and external, of the life of every 
 being, the two modes of self and relativity, of the sub- 
 jective and the objective that appertain to every existence, 
 we believe for each people and its component individuals 
 the same that we beUeve for Humanity and its com- 
 ponent peoples. As w-e believe in the association of 
 peoples, so we believe in association betv/een the 
 individuals who compose each nation, and in it as the 
 sole means of their progress, the principle destined to 
 govern all their institutions, and the pledge of concord in 
 their labours. As we believe in the liberty and equality 
 of the peoples, so we believe in liberty and equaUty 
 among the men of each Country, in the inviolability of 
 the ego, which is the conscience of individuals, and 
 assigns to them their share of work in the secondary 
 association, an office in the Nation, a special mission of
 
 Faith and the Future 177 
 
 citizenship in the sphere of the Fatherland. And as we 
 beheve in Humanity, the sole interpreter of God's Law, 
 so we believe for every State, in the People, the sole 
 master, the sole sovereign, the sole interpreter of the Law 
 of Humanity which rules the mission of each Nation : in 
 the People one and indivisible, that knows neither caste 
 nor privilege, save that of Genius and of Virtue, neither 
 proletariat nor aristocracy of land or money, but only 
 faculties and active forces consecrated, for the good of all, 
 to the administration of the surface of the globe, our 
 common heritage : — in the people free and independent, 
 with an organisation that shall harmonise individual 
 faculties and social thought ; the people living by its own 
 labour and the fruits thereof, pursuing in concord the 
 greatest possible good of all, yet respecting the rights of 
 the individual : — in the people made one family, with 
 one faith, one tradition, one thought of love, and 
 advancing to the ever fuller accomplishment of its 
 mission : — in the people, progressive, consecrated to an 
 apostolate of duties, never forgetful of a truth once won, 
 never slacking its efforts because of that victory, reverent 
 to the message of the generations, but resolved to use 
 the present as a bridge betwixt past and future, wor- 
 shipping revelation, not the revealers, able, little by little, 
 to approach the soluton of its destiny here on earth. 
 
 God and His Law, Humanity and its work of inter- 
 pretation, progress, association, liberty, equality, the 
 doctrine of the People, which is the vital principle of the 
 republican Party, all meet on the common ground of our 
 creed. (9.) We reject no conquest of the past. Before 
 us spreads a future where meet in close embrace the two 
 eternal principles of every organisation, the individual 
 and Humanity, liberty and association ; where one 
 philosophy, a genuine expression of religion, shall em- 
 brace in equal balance, every revelation of progress, 
 every holy idea which by providential design has been 
 successively transmitted to us. 
 
 "When before Young Europe's dawn all the altars of 
 the old world have fallen, two altars shall be raised upon 
 this soil that the divine Word has made fruitful : and
 
 178 
 
 Faith and the Future 
 
 the finger of the herald-people shall inscribe upon one, 
 Fatherland, and upon the other, Humanity. 
 
 " Like sons of the same mother, like brothers who will 
 not be parted, the people shall gather around those two 
 altars, and offer sacrifice in peace and love. And the 
 incense of the sacrifice shall ascend to heaven in two 
 columns that shall draw near each other as they mount, 
 until they are confounded in one point, which is God. 
 
 " And so often as they move asunder whilst they rise, 
 fratricide shall be on earth, and mothers shall weep on 
 earth, and angels in heaven." ^ 
 
 Now, suppose these things repeated in Europe, not as 
 an expression of the individual, but as the expression, 
 the Word, the Conscience of the republican Party, of the 
 whole party of progress — suppose the religious principle 
 to shine again on our path and unify our labours — 
 suppose God and Humanity conjoined in our popular 
 symbolism, as phenomenon and idea, thought and form ; 
 think ye not that our word would not kindle the doubt- 
 tossed multitudes who pray, and wait, and hope, because 
 no crusader's cry, no religious cry, sounds in their ears ? 
 Do you believe that between our Holy Alliance and 
 the accursed compact, between the apostles of progressive 
 free movement, and the stagnant sophists of old Europe, 
 they would discern on which side stands God, his Love, 
 his Truth ? And where God is there is the people also. 
 The people's philosophy is its faith. 
 
 And when faith shows not only on your lips, but in 
 your hearts ; when your deeds answer to your words, and 
 virtue hallows your lives as liberty hallows your minds ; 
 when as a band of brothers, believers in one flag, you 
 appear before men as they who seek the good ; when the 
 people say of you, they are a living faith, — think ye the 
 people will be slow to answer to your call ? Think ye 
 that the guerdon desired of all, of saving power to all, 
 which falls to them who shall herald the way to Europe, 
 think ye that that will not be gathered, aye and quickly ? 
 
 Great thoughts make great peoples. Let your life be 
 the epitome of one great organic thought. Widen the 
 
 ' The Faith of Young Europe (unpublished).
 
 Faith and the Future 179 
 
 peoples' horizon. Free their conscience from the 
 materialism that weighs it down. Point them to a vast 
 mission. Baptize them once again. Anger at wrong 
 done to material interests can only bring forth revolts ; 
 principles alone effect revolutions. Go back to first 
 principles and the people will follow you. 
 
 The question which agitates the world is a religious 
 question. Criticism and anarchy of belief have ex- 
 tinguished faith in the hearts of the peoples. A philo- 
 sophy that constructs, and unity of belief, will revive it. 
 
 Then — but not till then — will return that active energy 
 which grows with difficulties, but now collapses at each 
 trifling disappointment. Then will cease that state of 
 isolation and mistrust which wearies us, which multiplies 
 parties, obstructs association, makes of each individual a 
 separate rallying point, which makes us camps enough 
 but no armies to tenant them, which parts the poets to 
 one side, the men of prose and calculation to the other, 
 divides yet further the men of action, and further still 
 the high speculative intellects. Then we shall lose from 
 our ranks those who dishonour us, the clan of unclean 
 hearts and canting tongues, whose inconsistency of 
 language and performance suggests doubt concerning 
 our symbol, who prate of virtue, of self-sacrifice, of 
 charity, while vice is in their hearts, shame on their 
 foreheads, and selfishness in their souls ; who nail their 
 immorality on our banner, and hide themselves in the 
 day of battle, to reappear when danger is past that they 
 may gather the spoils of the vanquished and stain our 
 triumph by robbing it of its fruits. Then will disappear, 
 one by one, the prejudices and the influence of those 
 nameless, feeble men, who blame our war-cry because 
 themselves lack courage, who beg at an ambassador's 
 gate a dole of hope for their country, who drag the 
 exile's sacred name in the mire of cabinet intrigues, who 
 dream of salvation for the nations from the chicanery of 
 diplomatists ; men who ape in their conspiracies the 
 rusty tricks of the police, who mock at enthusiasm, deny 
 the power of inspiration and self-sacrifice, call martyrdom 
 quixotic, and try to regenerate the peoples by statistics.
 
 i8o Faith and the Future 
 
 Then will vanish the thousand inconsistencies that make 
 the party inferior to its mission ; patriots' lips lisping 
 foreigner almost as a reproach — what a blasphemy on the 
 cross of Christ from men who call themselves Christians, 
 republicans, and brothers — the guilty hesitation that robs 
 so many of our friends of strength to confess their 
 belief, that frightens them at every charge made from 
 the enemy's camp, that makes apostles of truth appear 
 as erring and guilty men ; that fascination of old names 
 which, by supplanting principles, has ruined so many 
 revolutions, and sacrificed fresh ideas to the petty tradi- 
 tions of the past ; the illogical, inconsistent spirit that 
 denies the oneness of mankind, that demands unlimited 
 liberty for some and absolute intolerance for others, 
 preaches political freedom and refuses literary freedom, 
 which shakes the social edifice to its foundations, and 
 petrifies religion. Then we shall see no more the angry 
 polemic that feeds on hatred, which snarls at every 
 reminder, which neglects principles for personalities, 
 which betrays in every sentence its jealous national 
 exclusiveness, and wastes its strength in unimportant 
 petty scuffles ; and lastly, we shall lose the frivolity, the 
 inconstancy of opinions, the forgetfulness of the martyrs 
 who are our saints, of the great men who are our priests, 
 of the great actions which are our prayer. Faith, which 
 is intellect, will, love, will blot out all those vices, and 
 end the discords of a society without a church, without 
 a head, that invokes a new world, but forgets to ask its 
 secret from God. And then, made fruitful by the breath 
 of God and of holy beliefs, poetry, now exiled from a 
 world that is a prey to anarchy, will blossom yet again ; 
 poetry, the flower of the angels, that martyrs' blood and 
 mothers' tears have fed, that oft will grow amid ruins, 
 but is ever coloured by a rising Sun. It speaks to us in 
 prophetic tones of Humanity, European in substance, 
 national in form. It will teach the Fatherland of the 
 fatherlands to the nations still divided ; it will translate 
 into Art the religious, social philosophy ; it will surround 
 with its own beautiful light, woman, who though a fallen 
 angel, is ever nearer to heaven than we. It will hasten
 
 Faith and the Future i8i 
 
 her redemption, restoring to her the mission of inspira- 
 tion, of pity, and of prayer, which Christianity divinely 
 symboHsed in Mary. It will sing the joys of martyrdom, 
 the immortality of the vanquished, the tears that expiate, 
 the sufferings that purify, the memories and the hopes, 
 the traditions of one world interwoven in the cradle of 
 another. It will murmur words of holy consolation to 
 those children of sorrow born before their time, those 
 fated and puissant souls who, like Byron, have no con- 
 fidants on earth, and whom the world of to-day strives 
 to rob even of God. And it will teach the young the 
 greatness of self-sacrifice, the virtue of constancy and 
 silence, how to be alone and yet despair not, how to 
 endure without a cry an existence of torments half 
 understood, unknown, long years of delusions and 
 bitterness and wounds, all without a complaint ; it will 
 teach a belief in future things, an hourly travail to pro- 
 mote it, without a hope in this life of seeing its victory. 
 
 Are these illusions ? Do I presume too much when I 
 ask of faith such prodigies in a century still corrupted by 
 scepticism, among men who are slaves of self^ who love 
 little, and quickly forget, who are troubled in soul, and 
 heed only the calculations of egotism, and the sensations 
 of the hour .? 
 
 No ; I do not presume too much. It is necessary 
 that this come to pass, aye, and it will come. I have 
 faith in God, in the potency of truth, and in the spirit 
 of the age. I feel in the depths of my heart that we 
 cannot stay as we are. The principle which was the 
 soul of the old world is exhausted. It is for us to open 
 the way to the new principle, and even should we perish 
 in the attempt we will lead the way. 
 
 X 
 
 The times were wrapped in shadow. Heaven was 
 a void. The peoples wandered, pricked by strange fears, 
 or paused in torpid, puzzled wonderment. Whole nations 
 disappeared ; others just raised their heads as though to 
 see them die. A hollow sound as of dissolution was
 
 1 82 Faith and the Future 
 
 heard in the world. All creation, earth and sky, 
 trembled. Man seemed in hideous case. Placed be- 
 tween two Infinites, he knew neither ; he knew not past 
 nor future. All belief was dead : dead the belief in the 
 Gods, dead the belief in the public. Society was not ; 
 nought but a Power that drowned in blood, or ate itself 
 away in deeds of shame and sin ; a senate, poor parody 
 of the majesty that had been, which voted gold and 
 statutes to the tyrant ; pretorians who despised the one 
 and slew the other ; informers, sophists, and a slavish 
 and obsequious multitude. There were no principles of 
 saving virtue : there existed but the calculation of 
 antagonistic interests. The Fatherland was exhausted. 
 The solemn voice of Brutus from the tomb had told the 
 world that Virtue was but a name. And the good 
 withdrew from that world, to keep their souls and 
 intellects from stain. Nerva starved himself to death. 
 Thraseas made libation of his own blood to Jove the 
 Liberator. The soul had disappeared : the senses alone 
 reigned. The people asked for bread and circus games. 
 Philosophy had become scepticism, epicureanism, or 
 mere sophistries and words. Poetry was satire. From 
 time to time man stood appalled at his own solitude, 
 and drew back from the wilderness. Then voices of fear 
 were heard at night by the wayside. Then the citizens, 
 almost frenzied with dread, clasped the bare, cold statutes 
 of the Gods that once they worshipped, and prayed of 
 them a spark of moral life, a ray of faith, even some 
 illusion ; but they went away unheard, with despair in 
 their hearts and blasphemy on their lips. Such were 
 those times, so like our own. 
 
 But yet, that was not the death-agony of the world ; 
 it was but the end of one phase of the world's evolution. 
 A great epoch was exhausted, passing away to leave the 
 road clear for another, whose first notes were already 
 ringing in the north, and that awaited only its initiator 
 to declare itself. He came. His was the soul most full 
 of love, most virtuous and holy, most inspired by God 
 and the future, that men have ever hailed on this earth : 
 it was Jesus. He bent over the decaying world, and
 
 Faith and the Future 183 
 
 murmured in its ear a word of faith. To that obscene 
 thing which retained nought but the aspect and notions 
 of a man, he uttered words unknown up to that day : 
 love^ se/f-sacrijice, celestial origin. The dead arose ; a 
 new life thrilled through that obscene thing which 
 philosophy had tried in vain to brmg to life. From it 
 came forth the Christian world, the world of liberty and 
 equality. Man was made manifest, the image and fore- 
 shadowing of God. Jesus died. As Lamennais has 
 said, he asked of men to save them only a cross to 
 die on. But ere he died, he announced to the people 
 the good 7ietvs. To those who asked him whence he had 
 it, he answered : From God the Father ; and from the 
 cross twice he called on Him. But from that cross his 
 victory began, and still endures. 
 
 Have faith, then, O ye that suffer for the noble cause, 
 apostles of a Truth that even to-day the world ignores, ye 
 soldiers of the holy battles which the world condemns 
 and calls rebellious. To-morrow, perhaps, that world, 
 to-day incredulous or careless, will bow with fervour 
 before you. To-morrow, victory will crown your 
 crusading banner. Onward in faith, and fear not. That 
 which Christ did Humanity can do. Believe, and you 
 will conquer. Believe, and the peoples will end by 
 following you. Believe, and act. Action is the Word 
 of God ; passive thought is but its shadow. Those who 
 sunder Thought and Action dismember God, and deny 
 the eternal Unity of things. Thrust them from your 
 ranks ; for whoso is not ready to testify to his faith with 
 his blood is no believer. 
 
 From your cress of misfortune and persecution 
 announce the whole faith of the Age ; but few days 
 will pass ere it receive its consecration of faith. Let 
 your lips not utter the cry of hate, nor the conspirator's 
 hollow phrase, but the tranquil, solemn word of the 
 days that are to come. From our cross of poverty and 
 proscription, we, the men of exile, who represent in our 
 heart and faith the races of the enslaved, the millions 
 doomed to silence, we will reply to you, and say to our 
 brothers : the alliance is made. Hurl at your persecutors
 
 1 84 
 
 Faith and the Future 
 
 the legend God and Humanity. For yet a little time 
 they may rebel and strive against it and stammer 
 blasphemy. But the masses will worship it. 
 
 There was a day in the sixteenth century, in Italy, in 
 Rome, when men called inqtiisitors, who pretended to 
 have science and authority from God, were gathered 
 together to decree the immobility of the Earth. Before 
 them stood a prisoner. Genius illumined his face. He 
 had outstripped his times and his fellow-men, and 
 revealed the secret of a world. 
 
 He was Galileo. 
 
 He shook his bald and venerable head. The soul 
 of that sublime old man rose in rebellion against the 
 senseless violence of men, who would have forced him 
 to deny the truth that God had taught him. But long 
 oppression had tamed his former energy. Frightened 
 by the threats of those monks, he was at the point of 
 yielding. He raised his hand to swear, even he, the 
 immobility of the Earth. But as he raised his hand, he 
 lifted his weary eyes to the sky which he had scanned 
 during long nights, to read in it a line of universal law ; 
 they caught a ray of that sun which he knew to be fixed 
 in the centre of the revolving spheres. Remorse pricked 
 his heart, and a cry in his own despite escaped from the 
 depths of his soul : Still it moves ! 
 
 Three centuries have passed away. Inquisitors, in- 
 quisition, the senseless propositions that force dictated, 
 all have disappeared. But still the Earth moves on, its 
 motion proved beyond a doubt, and still the words of 
 Galileo soar over the generations of Mankind. Lift thy 
 countenance to the sun of God, thou child of Humanity, 
 and read that legend in the heavens : it moves. Faith 
 and action. The future is ours. 
 
 NOTES TO FAITH AND THE FUTURE 
 
 (i.) Act, I say; but, by making this principle of 
 Action a standard of conduct, I do not mean action at 
 any price, feverish, disorganised, unreflecting action. I
 
 Faith and the Future 185 
 
 mean Action as a principle, a programme, a banner, as 
 that which ought to be the tendency and avowed end of 
 all our strivings. The rest is a question of time, with 
 which it is futile now to concern ourselves. It is sufficient 
 for us that a temporary necessity be not elevated to a 
 permanent theory ; that the peoples be not deluded 
 into substituting for revolutionary activity an indefinite, 
 uncertain, peacefully progressive force of events ; that we 
 no longer persist in handing over the great illumining 
 power of the revolutionary philosophy, to a spasmodic, 
 coldly critical work of constituted opposition. We rej-ect 
 the systematic want of movement, the silence that broods, 
 the dissimulation that betrays ; we invoke the frank, loyal 
 preaching of our doctrine. Ours is the cry of Ajax. We 
 want to fight in the open day illumined by the light of 
 heaven. Is this childish impatience ? No : it is the 
 complement of our doctrine, the baptism of our faith. 
 The principle of action that we inscribe on our banner is 
 closely bound up with our belief in a new Age. How 
 shall we initiate it save by the people and by Action, the 
 Word of the people? Without this principle of Action, 
 which we take as the standard of our efforts, we should 
 only produce a purely reactionary movement, and hence 
 an imperfect, superficial, material change of things. 
 
 (2.) My ideas on the French Revolution, considered as 
 the last word of the expiring Age rather than the first 
 word of the age which the nineteenth century initiates, 
 are already indicated in an article " On the Revolutionary 
 Initiative " published in the Revue Reptiblicaine of 1S35, 
 and I intend to develop my argument further when the 
 opportunity offers.^ I shall then perhaps be permitted 
 to prove that, in subjecting the past to a new test, I am 
 seeking, in the historical evolution of the stages of 
 progress, data for a new social aim ; a new European 
 philosophy that shall shift the new departure from a sitigle 
 predominant people, in order to communicate to all that 
 activity which is now lacking ; that I am not following 
 nebulous German metaphysics ; but only desire that thought 
 may be translated into fact, that the vicious circle in 
 
 ' See "Thoughts on the French Revolution," p. 251.
 
 1 86 Faith and the Future 
 
 which our activity is confined may be broken, and a 
 decisive battle forced between the two principles that are 
 now struggling for mastery in Europe. 
 
 It was said, in the preamble to my article in the Revue: 
 " Ought we to forget facts in order to improvise, by 
 merely wishing it, a Revolutionary force where it does 
 not really exist ? Can we blot out the past ? Can we 
 leave out of our calculations the Revolutions of Modena 
 and Bologna ? " 
 
 Theoretically, the position in which we are placed by 
 our religious and philosophical belief leaves us untouched 
 by any argument deduced from those facts. We are near 
 to one of those periods of regeneration which, by intro- 
 ducing a new element into the great terrestrial scheme of 
 life, generates new forces and shifts the central point of 
 all questions. We hail the dawn of a new age. The 
 Revolution of which we have a presentiment will embrace 
 a large part of Humanity. Now, every new purpose calls 
 into action new forces latent in the peoples. But, putting 
 aside the main question, why do our critics forget that in 
 Italy the people — the only true Revolutionary force — has 
 never entered the lists ; that our insurrections never went 
 outside the circle of a military or bourgeois caste ; that 
 the masses were never called upon to share in the under- 
 taking ? Why do they forget that the insurrection never 
 assumed an avowed Jtaliafi character ? Why argue from 
 the monarchical risings of 1821 to the prejudice of the 
 7-epublican insurrection for which we are striving ? How 
 possibly calculate the results of a principle by studying 
 the consequences of a contrary principle ? Between us 
 republicans of " Young Italy " and those who laboured 
 before us, between those who desire to move the masses 
 with the cry of " God and the People " and the incon- 
 sistent, timid men who forget God and fear the People, 
 a great gulf is fixed. 
 
 " The risings of Modena and Bologna failed because 
 France did not support them." True. How is it 
 possible for an insurrection not to fail when betrayed by 
 the very principle upon which its life was based ? Now, 
 this principle on which the leaders of the Italian
 
 Faith and the Future 187 
 
 Insurrection took their stand was the principle of non- 
 intervention. And blind faith in }io)i-mterventio7i pre- 
 vented them from taking the steps that self-preservation 
 demanded in order to work out their salvation. The 
 masses were repulsed, the young discouraged, every force 
 that had a germ of life ignored ; they omitted to procure 
 arms, they denied the idea of Nationality, they confined 
 the area of the insurrection within the limits of a single 
 province. Are these permanent causes of weakness ? 
 From then till now every Italian who has not perverted 
 his national sentiment in the conventions of the Parisian 
 juste milieu will reply that if our forces are still sterile, 
 if even to-day we number so many martyrs and so few 
 fighters, we owe it mainly to the doctrine that the initiative 
 of the European struggle devolves upon France, and that 
 when she will not stir no one must attempt to move. It 
 is urgent, therefore, to combat this doctrine preached 
 among us by those very men who, from their resources in 
 means and influence, should be first to take action. It 
 is a doctrine that destroys the conscience and future of 
 the peoples, a doctrine which the French republicans 
 ought to join with us in fighting. I do not therefore 
 blame France. I only ask the republican Press to intro- 
 duce the new tendencies and language that correspond 
 to the new mission. But I deservedly blame the men 
 who, living in the midst of oppressed peoples, increase 
 the difliculties of the work of emancipation by the 
 insincere belief that marks worse than lukewarm con- 
 victions ; I blame those who boast themselves the apostles 
 of a humanitarian philosophy, and yet, with their theory 
 of a single revealer and their rejection of the continuity 
 of progress, sink by stress of logic to the rejection of the 
 doctrine of the intelligence and sovereignty of the people, 
 only to evoke some vague revival of the Papacy ; I blame 
 the men who declare Humanity to be impossible until 
 France be hailed Queen of the universe. (See Histoire 
 Parlementaire de la Revolution Francaise — Christ et le 
 Peuple, par A. Siguier.) And this is not an isolated 
 thought of one individual ; it is the doctrine of a whole 
 school. Now, we protest against the doctrine of that
 
 1 88 Faith and the Future 
 
 school, against its national egotism, its tendencies to 
 trespass on others' rights. Brothers of all who desire the 
 Association of the equal and free, we feel a special affection 
 for that people which for fifty years has fought for the 
 emancipation of the nations, and translated into the 
 sphere of politics the grand results of the Christian 
 Age. 
 
 (3.) It is an error to base our estimate of the work of 
 moral freedom achieved by the Reformation upon the 
 accident of a protest against the Diet of Spires, from 
 which the term protestantism originated. Protestantism 
 was not, as the neo-Christians affirm, a negation, a work 
 of criticism in relation to the age. It was a positive 
 Christian product, a solemn manifestation of the i?tdividual 
 — which is the aim of Christianity. It protested, doubt- 
 less, but only against the Papacy, which by desiring what 
 it was unable to perform, and attempting to establish a 
 social unity with an individualistic instrument, w^as 
 necessarily fated to degenerate into tyranny and thus 
 place itself outside that Christian philosophy of life 
 which, before it had attained its complete development, 
 said to man, " Be free." It is not therefore a protest 
 agai?ist the philosophy of its age, but in favour of the 
 philosophy which the Papacy, impotent to realise a 
 sublime instinct of the future, destroyed instead of de- 
 veloping. 
 
 (4.) No one can reasonably charge us with ignoring 
 the catholic spirit that presides over the destinies of 
 modern civilisation. Everybody knows the meaning 
 generally given to the word Catholicism. If Catholicism 
 were only synonymous with universal, we might recall 
 the fact that every religion by its nature tends to be- 
 come catholic, and notably so the philosophy that w-rites 
 Humanity at the head of its articles of faith. 
 
 (5.) I anticipate the objection : " Success is a de- 
 lusion : slavery, inequality, remain everywhere. The 
 struggle was scarcely begun by the French Revolution. 
 The individual still dominates every question ; and while 
 you talk of a new age, unanswered prayers are raised on 
 every side imploring that the social ideal declared by you
 
 Faith and the Future 189 
 
 to be exhausted, may even now be attained and trans- 
 lated into fact." 
 
 We must not confound the discovery of an element 
 of progress with its realisation and triumph, the ideal 
 evolution of the thought of an age with its material 
 application, the conquest with its practical consequences. 
 The positive application of a given principle to the 
 different parts of the political, economic, and civil 
 organism cannot successfully begin except its moral 
 development in men's minds be completed. That 
 development constitutes the work of an Age. Scarcely 
 is it completed when some power — an individual or a 
 people — proclaims its results and hands its formula to 
 the nations. Then a new Age has already begun, in 
 which, while men's minds are working at the newly 
 revealed principle, the gradual completion is effected of 
 the principle of the dead or dying Age. The thought 
 of one Age is only realised when the mind is already 
 fixed upon the ideal of the new Age. Were this other- 
 wise, the chain that connects the Ages would be broken, 
 and what is termed a lapse of continuity would take place. 
 
 Now I affirm, that if on the one hand the material 
 application of the two principles, hberty and equality, 
 that constituted the doctrine of the individual, be not 
 effected — nor will it be effected until a people has 
 marked the new principle as the end and aim of the 
 common task — yet, on the other hand, their develop- 
 ment is morally accomplished. I maintain that the 
 unknown factor of the Middle Ages can now be placed 
 in the category of known quantities, that what was 
 hypothesis is now an axiom ; that the theory has 
 become an admitted, recognised law. Who denies 
 liberty or equality ? Who doubts the Right ? The 
 most illiberal king speaks in the name of that liberty 
 he abhors in his heart. If we may believe him, he is 
 protecting the liberties and rights of his subjects against 
 the anarchy of factions. The question is decided in 
 the sphere of principles : the only difference of opinion 
 relates to its application. We dispute, not about the 
 law, but about its interpretation.
 
 IQO Faith and the Future 
 
 The individual is now no longer the etid of our 
 labours. He, even he, indeed, will be seen to be 
 sacred when the social law is proclaimed, and we are 
 bound to bring our duties and rights into harmony with 
 it ; while the worship of individuality has given place 
 to an ignoble individualism, to egotism, to a nameless 
 immorality. 
 
 (6.) Association, say some, is no new principle : it 
 cannot therefore, as the objective of the forces of 
 mankind, constitute a new system or induce its necessity. 
 Association is nothing but a method, a means for realis- 
 ing liberty and equality. It belongs to the old system, 
 and we see no necessity for a new one. 
 
 Association, I admit, in its more general signification, 
 is no more than the method of progress, the means by 
 which it is gradually achieved. To every step forward 
 there corresponds a new degree of force, a new expansion 
 of association. And in this sense, so far as we are con- 
 cerned, association began with the progress that is coeval 
 with the origin of our planet. Its work appeared in 
 every dead philosophy, most of all in that which men 
 wish to see dominant to-day. 
 
 Nevertheless, though association has always exercised 
 an influence upon us, it has been without our knowledge. 
 Men were unconsciously under its influence. Thus it 
 was with progress, with the law of gravitation, with all 
 great physical and moral truths. They were at work 
 before they were revealed. 
 
 But is there not a difference between an undiscovered 
 law and one that is proclaimed, recognised, accepted — 
 a difference sufficient to change the starting-point of 
 intellectual labour ? The law, when defined, imposes a 
 dicty on us of ruling our actions in accordance with it. 
 The fulfilment of the law becomes an end for all our 
 efforts, and the study of every thinker is how to derive 
 the greatest possible results from it. Minds no longer 
 risk going astray and losing precious time in researches 
 whose object has been already obtained. Forces are 
 increased a hundredfold by concentration : they work in 
 a determined direction. Formerly the instinct of law
 
 Faith and the Future 191 
 
 only produced a right — and a right that was nearly always 
 contested. 
 
 The great historical ages date, not from the birth of a 
 law, a truth, a principle, but from their promulgation. 
 Were this not so, it would be absurd to speak of distinct 
 ages or philosophies. Truth is one and eternal : thought^ 
 the germ of the world in God, contains it all. 
 
 Equality existed in principle long before Jesus, and 
 the world was unconsciously tending towards it. Why, 
 then, recognise the Christian age ? 
 
 The earth did not wait for the revelations of Copernicus 
 or Galileo, or the formulas of Newton, to describe its orbit 
 round the sun. Why, then, do we recognise the two dis- 
 tinct astronomical Ages of the Ptolemaic and Newtonian 
 systems? And, coming nearer to the present day, did 
 not the theories of the English economists, and those, 
 too quickly forgotten, of the St. Simonians, mark out two 
 radically different periods of economic science ? Yet the 
 only difference between them is the substitution of the 
 principle of association for that of liberty. 
 
 Now, we believe the time has arrived for the principle 
 of association to be solemnly and universally proclaimed, 
 and become the centre of all study, theoretical and 
 practical, which aims at the progressive organisation of 
 human societies, to shine at the head of our constitu- 
 tions, our codes of law, the articles of our faith. And 
 furthermore, I maintain that the promulgation of a 
 principle which marks out an entirely new direction for 
 our studies is sufficient to constitute, or at least to 
 indicate, a new Age, if nothing more. 
 
 And, moreover, our motto is not Association merely : it 
 implies the association of Europe, and by its means of 
 Humanity in all its faculties and forces, with the neces- 
 sary conditions of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, for 
 the purpose of achieving a common end, namely, the 
 discovery and progressive application of its law of 
 life. 
 
 (7.) Right is obviously a secondary idea, a deduction 
 which forgets the principle it sprang from, a mere con- 
 sequence which has been inflated to an absolute and
 
 192 Faith and the Future 
 
 independent doctrine. Every right exists in virtue of a 
 law, the law of Being, the law that defines the nature of 
 the subject treated. Where is this law? I do not know. 
 Its discovery is the aim of the present Age, but the 
 certainty of its existence is enough to make us sub- 
 stitute the idea of duty for that of right. 
 
 (8.) The word democracy^ although when endowed with 
 historical precision it may express vigorously enough 
 the ideal of a world, at least of the ancient world, is, 
 like all the political phrases of antiquity, unequal to the 
 conception of the future Age which we republicans are 
 called to initiate. The expression social governinetit 
 would be preferable as indicating the conception of 
 association, which is the life of the Age. The word 
 democracy was inspired by an idea of rebellion, sacred 
 indeed, but still rebellion. Now, every such conception 
 is evidently imperfect and inferior to the idea of Unity 
 which will be the doctrine of the future. There is a 
 note of strife in the word democracy : it is the cry of 
 Spartacus, the expression of a people in its first attempt 
 to rise. " Social government," " Social institutions," 
 represent a people organising itself after victory. The 
 extinction of aristocracy will efface the name de/iiocracy. 
 
 (9.) We are not expounding a doctrine, but a series 
 of bases for belief, disjointed and merely stated, but 
 nevertheless sufficient to indicate the nature of our 
 religious and philosophical conceptions. Our political 
 beliefs are only consequences more or less direct and 
 evident. It is easy to understand how the mere fact of 
 preaching a new age, and a new philosophy of life, 
 separates us from all who believe themselves to be 
 carrying on the old principle, and entrust a new de- 
 velopment only to those nations who are guardians of 
 the highest expression of progress yet attained to. The 
 principle that a new system of philosophy must include 
 all the elements of the preceding philosophies besides 
 its own, is the formal rejection of every theory that 
 destroys and does not harmonise ; of every political 
 school which only asks to substitute one class for another, 
 one social element for another; of every exclusive
 
 Faith and the Future 193 
 
 system which, Hke that of Baboeuf, destroys Hberty for 
 the sake of a chimerical, deceptive equaHty, which 
 eliminates the most sublime moral factor, that of the 
 ego, and renders all progress impossible ; or which, like 
 the American School, centres itself in the individual, 
 solves every political problem in the sense of liberty- 
 alone, smothers the principle of association under the 
 omnipotence of the ego, condemns progress to the 
 irregularities of a fitful, intermittent movement which 
 defies calculation, plants distrust in the civil organisa- 
 tion, dismembers social unity in an independent dualism 
 of the temporal and spiritual powers, and introduces 
 materialism, individualism, egotism, and contradiction 
 into the minds of men through the doctrine of the 
 atlieisin of the law and the sovereignty of rights and. 
 interests. Our conception of Humanity as the sole 
 interpreter of the Law of God separates us from every 
 School that divides progress into two distinct Ages> 
 confines it almost by force within one single defined 
 philosophy or religion, or which imprisons the traditions 
 of Humanity in the theory of one sole revealer, or 
 which breaks the continuity of our labours by the 
 theory of a constant supernatural intervention, by the 
 theory of a series of complete dispensations without 
 relation to each other, by a chain of social formulas 
 all revealed, all sundered by a void between. Our 
 principle of the People, which is simply the appli- 
 cation of the doctrine of Humanity to every nation^ 
 is the direct and sufficient cause of the principle of 
 universal suffrage, which is the manifestation of the 
 people, and of the exclusion of all authority that is 
 not delegated by the people, or is exercised by one 
 caste or individual. The principle of association, con- 
 sidered as the sole method of progress, involves un- 
 limited liberty for all associations for secondary or 
 special objects not in conflict with the moral law. 
 The principle of moral unity, without which association, 
 is impossible, implies the duty of a general elementary 
 education to expound the programme of such associationk 
 to all who will be partners in it. Lastly, the principle 
 
 H
 
 194 Faith and the Future 
 
 that declares the individual sacred and inviolable, carries 
 with it not only the absolute liberty of the press, the 
 .abolition of the death penalty, and of every other 
 punishment, that, instead of developing, improving, and 
 perfecting the individual, tends to suppress and limit 
 Tiim, but also -a whole theory of work considered as 
 a manifestation of the individual and the representation 
 of his worth.
 
 THE PATRIOTS AND THE 
 CLERGY
 
 The Essay on "The Patriots and the Clergy" is an appeal to the 
 liberals and the clergy to show mutual tolerance. There had been a 
 good deal of the ultramontane propagandism, which culminated ten years 
 later in the Sonderbund. The liberals, on their side, had been disposed 
 to put it down with a high hand. Mazzini believed that there were many 
 among the Catholic clergy whose real sympathies were with reform, and 
 he appeals to them to carry out the democratic teaching of the Gospel. 
 The sceptical and stunted ideas of the liberals were largely responsible 
 for their alienation. .V bigger national policy and mutual foroearance 
 would, he hoped, range many of the priests on the side of progress. 
 
 The lasting interest of the Essaj' lies in Mazzini's exposition of his 
 views as to the relations of Church and State. In advocating the inde- 
 pendence of the two, he was, as he recognised, at variance with his ideal. 
 Brought up in a Catholic country, he had a Catholic's craving for unity of 
 belief. Fusing as he did in his mind religion and politics, the conception 
 of a "Free Church in a Free State" was repugnant to him. Sooner or 
 later, he had no doubt, Church and State would be identified, and till 
 then there could be no true social unity. But at present such an identifica- 
 tion could only work harm. The Church taught doctrines that intelligence 
 could not accept. The men who ruled the State were too limited in their 
 ideals to be entrusted with spiritual authority : the future social unity lay 
 outside their comprehension, and their only logical position was to apply 
 the principle of liberty all round. Hence, all religious propagandism, so 
 long as it respected the liberty of others, should be treated as a matter 
 of opinion, and the Government must hold its hands off. Possibly, had 
 Mazzini's advice been followed, the Civil War of the Sonderbund might 
 have been avoided : it is probable though that the ultramontane party was 
 too aggressive, and the question too much complicated with that of 
 cantonal rights, to have made it possible for the Government to leave 
 matters alone. 
 
 Incidentall3' the Essay touches a good deal on contemporary Swiss 
 politics. 
 
 They had a dull outlook at the time. The different cantons were con- 
 nected by the loosest of bonds ; the Diet was a mere " ghost of authority," 
 and meekly obedient to orders from Paris or Vienna. Many of the cantons 
 were governed by narrow oligarchies ; the reforming movement which had 
 followed the French Revolution of 1830 had been checked. The Great 
 Councils of the cantons debated with closed doors. Customs' lines 
 checked trade, privileged guilds fettered industry, there was no common 
 monej' or common standard of weights and measures, public offices were 
 openly sold, Jesuits had been admitted into the Catholic cantons. There 
 were three political parties : the Conservatives, anxious to preserve the 
 old cantonal autonomy ; the party of Union, aiming at a single centralised 
 Government and the practical abolition of the canton ; and the Federalists, 
 who wished to combine a strong Federal Government with a large degree 
 of local independence. Mazzini threw in his lot with the latter; he held 
 unity to be the ideally best policy for Switzerland, but thought that the 
 canton was too deeply rooted in the history of the country to be abolished. 
 He exerted himself to persuade the Unionists to combine with the 
 Federalists. Federalism, he thought, would lift Swiss politics into a 
 purer air. Switzerland was in a critical condition : the absence of a strong 
 Government laid her at the mercy of Austria and France ; timidity and 
 compromise predominated in all her political actions ; the narrow cantonal 
 life threatened to smother her in "a mud-death." Publicity of delibera- 
 tion, a constituent assembly to determine the question of Federalism, 
 greater independence towards foreign powers, was his programme. 
 Thirteen years later the constitution of 1S48 realised his wishes except on 
 the latter point, and it is worthy of note that Druey, one of the two 
 framers of the constitution, was his personal friend.
 
 THE PATRIOTS AND THE 
 CLERGY 
 
 I 
 
 October 7, 1835. 
 
 " There is no power on earth that surpasses or equals 
 that of the Clergy, when they are imbued with the genius 
 of a nation, and guide it faithfully in its natural progress 
 according to the laws that direct the procession of its 
 life. But if, by error or from interest, they set them- 
 selves in opposition to those eternal laws, if they attempt 
 to hold the people in a state which it knows to be not 
 good, and so block the roads to the Future, they lose 
 thereby the power they had. Their words excite mis- 
 trust, they are involved in the hate born of the evil 
 they have tried to perpetuate, and the people regard 
 them as the enemy. Once they lived by the love the 
 People gave them for their own trust in it ; now faith and 
 love have vanished, their living force is spent, and voices 
 of scorn and cursing are the only obsequies that follow 
 their dishonoured bier. 
 
 " Ireland and Poland have given, and still give, us the 
 example of a clergy strong in its union with the People 
 whose rights they have ever defended. But where the 
 priesthood ranges itself with despotism against the People, 
 what is its fate ? Will the Anglican clergy save a de- 
 crepit aristocracy rejected by the nation ? Will the 
 Spanish monks perchance place the legitimate Don Carlos 
 on the throne of Philip the Second ? Will they restore 
 the system under which Spain has suffered so much and 
 fallen so low ? Yet, is there another country where the 
 influence characteristic of their organisation was more 
 
 197
 
 198 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 widely diffused ? But yesterday men spoke of Monkish 
 Spaiti ; to-morrow, probably they will seek in vain from 
 one end of the peninsula to the other a single remnant 
 of those who but a short time since were so powerful." 
 
 He who recently wrote these grave and true words is 
 a Christian and republican priest,^ who spent half his 
 life combating the movement towards freedom of those 
 Peoples whom God is urging to an unknown end. One 
 day, perhaps while reading the Gospel over again with all 
 the faith of which a man is capable, he perceived that 
 he had erred ; he reconsidered his position, and, like a man 
 of high intellect and pure conscience, he confessed his 
 error. Then, after having at Rome looked his idol in 
 the face, he returned a sad and disillusioned man, and 
 placed himself at the head of the crusade which the men 
 of progress in all countries have proclaimed in Christ's 
 name for the People's cause. 
 
 We, on our side, have long felt the need of expressing 
 something similar, to that portion of the Swiss clergy, 
 which is reactionary at heart and takes its orders from 
 Rome and Vienna alike ; which fights, without rest and 
 apparently with some definite purpose, against that 
 national progress which leads our people to new con- 
 quests of science and liberty and equality. 
 
 Between the dark plots of one party and the growing 
 irritation of the other, our feeble voice will not perhaps 
 be listened to to-day. Our words will pass by like so 
 many others, barren and unheeded ; none the less, we are 
 forced to utter them, if only to discharge a duty to our 
 conscience. In the party which we are apt perhaps too 
 much in Voltairian fashion to prejudice under the name 
 of the clerical party, there are men of good faith ; men 
 who are not perverse but only misled ; devout souls, 
 whose sincerity and zeal only serve the machinations of 
 those who libel the patriots and liberalism, who paint the 
 former as the enemies of all religion, and insult the latter 
 by giving it the characteristics of anarchy. To those 
 we offer sincere words of peace and fraternity ; because, 
 although they have turned to reactionary ways, they 
 
 > Lamencais.
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 199 
 
 represent in the Church what we are accustomed to 
 respect wherever it shows itself— y^/V/i! and religious feel- 
 ing. The others, conspirators and reactionaries by system, 
 only represent class interests and greed and lust of 
 power. For those we only feel contempt. 
 
 We must leave on one side all that touches the pre- 
 sent time : we attach no importance to intrigues of the 
 moment or petty local encroachments ; they were easily 
 foreseen. The coups (Tetat that have lately taken place 
 in France could not fail to find a certain correspondence 
 among us. Rome, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and 
 Berlin, all form an alliance of homogeneous elements, 
 so many links in a chain, so many fires that radiate in 
 unison their sinister flashes, now singly, now together ;. 
 and just at the present moment we see their united 
 flare. The word of command was passed round that 
 the whole chain should move. Hence there is no need 
 to wonder at all those petty plots that are being hatched 
 and unhatched in the night, and will perish in the night, 
 unless they win a fictitious importance. We are bound 
 to say that, if considered in a merely political light, the 
 question does not seem to us worthy of serious attention ;. 
 nor do the acrid polemics started on the subject by 
 some cantonal newspapers deserve it. So far as we 
 are concerned, we recognise in politics neither clerical 
 party, nor catholic party, nor romanist party. From 
 our point of view there are only two great parties : the 
 progressive and the reactionary. They are composed of 
 individuals of every order, of every rite, of every sect. 
 But neither order, nor rite, nor sect should save the 
 factious from punishment. Governments have the right 
 to control and repress any individual interest which 
 disturbs the social order, or arbitrarily overrides or 
 excepts itself from the public law (which is the bond 
 and seal of association for all the inhabitants of a 
 country), and thus revolts de facto against the common 
 weal. But, outside the circle within which this legiti- 
 mate authority may be exercised, there is not, and 
 cannot be, especially in the existing state of things, any 
 rule save full and perfect liberty ; liberty for every
 
 200 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 citizen and every opinion, it matters not whether they 
 be reactionary or progressive ; hberty for all actions 
 that have naturally the sanction and support of the 
 public law. In the present state of theories and facts, 
 every question of religious worship and organisation is 
 a question of the public law and liberty. So long as 
 the actions and pretensions of a sect, or of any religious 
 association, do not exceed the limits of its own constitu- 
 tion, or do not touch the civil order of society, you 
 have no right to interfere. The intervention of Govern- 
 ment can only be applied at the present day to actions 
 that directly violate existing laws. The rest belongs 
 to the sphere of ideas, and is a question of belief. 
 Heform belief, spread the light, meet fanatical news- 
 papers with other newspapers. Do not thwart the work 
 of the patriots, do not obstruct their progress with 
 unjust suspicions, or a disgraceful and cowardly com- 
 pliance with the demands of foreign courts, or an obvious 
 disposition to stagnate in the status quo. Defend the 
 free press instead of being frightened by it, and have no 
 other fears. Allow the Pope to select at his pleasure 
 bishops who are foolish, and ignorant, and out of touch 
 with the times : what can they do other than hasten 
 the downfall of the papal power? Let the Jesuits and 
 others of the factious make expensive journeys, hold 
 their conferences, write their wretched articles, their 
 contemptible and inept pamphlets : suffer them to go 
 their ways. Persecution would only exalt them by 
 giving them an excuse to pose as victims ; it would 
 invest them with an importance that neither their 
 writings, nor their meetings, nor the intrigues in which 
 they exhaust themselves could ever win for their sect. 
 The old Catholicism is dying : let it struggle even in 
 its death-throes. Its death-blow will come from some 
 idea that shines with the light of truth, not from the 
 hammer of restrictive laws. All the regulations and 
 curbs you may invent will not be worth one single 
 school of thought. 
 
 Therefore, as far as the political question is concerned, 
 we agree with the opinion expressed by Troxler at the
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 201 
 
 time of the Baden Conference, an opinion supported 
 afterwards, if our memory serves us rightly, by a daily 
 paper that gave effective assistance to the cause of 
 progress in Geneva: we mean the ^'■Europe Centrales 
 There is a conception which must one day (we, at least, 
 have no doubt) harmonise, or rather identify the two 
 Powers of Church and State ; but until this is clear and 
 definite in the mind and conscience of the Nations, until 
 political thought rises to the height and sacredness of a 
 religious idea, and true social unity is established, till 
 then ecclesiastical and political authority should be 
 exercised freely, and, so far as possible, independently 
 of each other on distinct lines. Their respective activities 
 must not clash, and hence they must not interfere with 
 each other. Each has the right to associate itself with 
 whomever it pleases ; to receive inspirations from any 
 source it likes ; to pay those whom it chooses and accepts 
 as the interpreters of its religion and the rulers of its 
 conscience. So long as ecclesiastical bodies do not 
 overstep the limits of the religious sphere in which they 
 move, it is within their power to do whatever they please, 
 and propagate their beliefs by speech or writing in the 
 way that seems good to them. We do not fear the 
 influence of political or religious prejudices where we 
 are allowed a free hand and a fair field to confute them. 
 We do fear — if for nothing else, for the example of a 
 dangerous precedent — the intervention of Government 
 where it is not absolutely required by the force of 
 circumstances. We wish to concede the smallest 
 possible amount of power to the present Governments, 
 just because we have no faith in them. Nor do we 
 expect from their efi"orts any fruit of national progress, 
 because we suspect that, while they accentuate certain 
 questions under the colour of religion, their only purpose 
 is to distract public attention from national questions. 
 In 1830 the conquest of Algeria was designed to con- 
 ceal from the French — a brilliant and chivalrous people — 
 the odious nature of the projected decrees. And now, in 
 our case, it is perhaps not too daring to presume, that 
 the ostentatious energy displayed against the foolish
 
 202 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 encroachments of the ultramontane clergy has been 
 merely used to defend the want of energy in dealing 
 with political encroachments much more pernicious. We 
 desire to substitute for governmental influence quite 
 another weapon. We should wish to see the activity 
 necessary to progress transferred from that influence to a 
 national Centre. We should like to find the breach less 
 often filled by the Authority of the law, and more often 
 by the men of progress, not excluding those members of 
 the Christian priesthood who are equally inspired by the 
 love of fatherland and liberty. The latter should place 
 themselves as apostles of truth and light between the 
 people, who have strayed through lack of education, 
 and the leaders of agitations. They should apply the 
 activity and constancy that evil-minded priests give to 
 the cause of Satan and his powers of darkness, to the 
 defence of Christ's heritage — that is to say, equality and 
 the improvement of the greatest number. 
 
 With these premisses we purpose ascending to the social 
 question, and, from the Pisgah of a religious conception 
 and of the future destinies of the People — or rather of the 
 Peoples — to address, with faith in our own rectitude, with 
 our hand on our heart, the following words to the erring 
 members of the clergy. 
 
 11 
 
 October lO, 1S35. 
 
 In the name of Christ, whither are you hastening ? In 
 the name of Him who walked with the People and whom 
 the mighty put to death, why walk you with the mighty? 
 Why do you abandon the People's cause ? Why do 
 you stand aloof from those who hold His banner on 
 high and seek to translate into facts the teachings of 
 Christ .? 
 
 Christ said : " Love God first, and love ye one another 
 with brotherly affection." 
 
 And He also said : " He who would be first among 
 you let him be the servant of all." 
 
 In those words is comprehended the whole essence 
 of Christianity. Unity of faith, mutual love, human
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 203 
 
 brotherhood, activity in good works, the doctrine of 
 self-sacrifice, the affirmation of the doctrine of equality, 
 the abolition of all aristocracy, the perfecting of the 
 individual, and liberty, without which neither love nor 
 perfection can exist — all this is summed in those two 
 precepts. 
 
 If we inscribe on our banner the words : Liberty, 
 Equality, Humanity, we become the heralds of a 
 Christian faith. We seek the unity of belief that Christ 
 promised for all Peoples, for all the earth. We are neither 
 Catholics nor Protestants : the true doctrine of Christ 
 has made Christians only. 
 
 If we cry to the Masses : " God and the People ! There 
 is only one master in heaven, God : one master on the 
 earth, the People; the whole People associated in an 
 active belief, fruitful in peace and love, in order to 
 advance under the eye of God to the knowledge and 
 interpretation of his universal law," we take upon our- 
 selves the office of Christ's apostles. Christ came for 
 all ; He spoke to all and for all. He did not have one 
 teaching for some, another for others. He spoke from 
 the Mount in the same language to all who crowded 
 around Him. He hurled His anathema against the Scribes 
 and Pharisees, who were the men of caste, the privileged 
 classes of His time. Before His coming there were, in 
 the opinion of the world, two natures of men — the nature 
 of the master and the nature of the slave. He destroyed 
 this fallacy. He proclaimed the unity of human nature 
 by teaching the unity of its origin. He burst the 
 chains of servitude. He raised up the People and died 
 for it. 
 
 And if we follow out His teachings to their consequences, 
 if we try to apply them to civil society, if we protest with 
 all our might against every opposition, every inequality^ 
 every violation of His Holy Word, we incarnate in our 
 very selves the moral teaching of Christ. We are 
 labouring for His faith, for the salvation and organisation 
 of the Church of Humanity, which is the congregatioti of 
 the believers in that faith. Since man was made in the 
 image of God, we are labouring that human society may
 
 204 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 be fashioned, so far as possible, in the image of the 
 divine society, of that celestial country where all are 
 equal, where the same love and the same happiness exist 
 for all. We seek to learn the ways of God upon the 
 earth because we know that this earth was given to us as 
 the workshop of our labour ; because only by fulfilling 
 His task upon it, does man become worthy to ascend to 
 heaven ; because we know we are to be judged by our 
 works in this world, by the help we have given to the 
 poor, by the consolation we have shown to the afflicted. 
 We may not lock ourselves up in barren and selfish 
 prayer for our own souls, while the cry of the poor and 
 oppressed smites our ears, nor turn away our faces from 
 our neighbour, and be content with our own spiritual 
 progress, while all around us is falling to wreck ; while 
 the country that God has given us is in danger of a dis- 
 honourable death from the despotic influence of the 
 foreigner, and the germs of anarchy that vitiate its 
 institutions ; while those who should be first to expel the 
 evils that threaten us allow themselves to drift on in 
 fatuous security, and prostitute the house of God to 
 foreign insolence and that base trickery that goes by the 
 name of diplomacy. The law of God has not two 
 measures. It is the law for heaven as for earth. We 
 cannot wish that our immortal spirit should deny on 
 earth the gift of liberty, which is the source of Good and 
 Evil in human actions, and whose exercise constitutes in 
 the eyes of God the virtuous and the wicked man. We 
 cannot wish that the brow that was made to lift itself to 
 heaven should bend in the dust before any man, whoever 
 he may be, nor suffer that soul which aspires to eternal 
 Truth to grovel in the mire, ignorant of its rights, its 
 power, and its noble origin. We cannot call ourselves 
 Christians, and permit men, instead of loving o?te another 
 like brothers, to be selfish, hostile, divided, city from city, 
 canton from canton, nation from nation. We therefore 
 preach Association as the means of general perfectibility ; 
 liberty, equality, human dignity, enfranchisement from all 
 servitude ; the progress of all institutions ; the sacredness 
 of every land from the invader ; the honour and well-
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 205 
 
 being of every People ; an alliance of all nations ; the 
 destruction by free speech of all prejudices. We preach 
 the doctrine of the Fatherland, the abode and temple of 
 our race; the doctrine oi Humanity that Christ announced, 
 the ambit and bond of fellowship of all countries, who 
 shall be free and independent, but sisters in one faith, 
 one love, one Gospel. And when we preach these things, 
 we are ready, if needs be, to seal them with our blood, to 
 die as Christ died for their realisation and the salvation 
 of all men. 
 
 Now, these ideas germinated at the foot of the 
 cross of Christ — of the Christ you serve. For eighteen 
 hundred years they have been permeating the world, 
 now under one, now under another form ; to-day they 
 are applied to politics, a short time since to the move- 
 ment of the intellect. Their virtue destroyed feudalism, 
 abolished in nearly every country the aristocracy of 
 blood, and is about to deal it the last blow in feudal 
 England. The princes of Europe leagued themselves 
 against these ideas ; the forces of all the privileged 
 classes were often gathered to oppose them ; but in the 
 end every one of their attempts failed. Those ideas 
 seemed to fall vanquished ; you would have said they 
 were banished for ever from the world ; yet they re- 
 appeared. They were drowned in blood, and they 
 reappeared. In one age they were condemned to the 
 fires of the Inquisition, in another to the gallows 
 of kings ; and they reappeared more potent, more 
 ubiquitous, more threatening than ever. They in- 
 vaded the armies assembled to destroy them, the 
 tribunals called to condemn them, and even the 
 remnants of those very aristocracies that had been 
 wounded to death by them. They marched to a 
 national crusade in Poland under the banner of the 
 mother of Christ. In the name of the cross of Christ 
 they gave back Greece to Europe. They move the 
 world, advancing between victory and martyrdom. 
 And do you call movements like these the work of 
 a sect? In this potency of new life that is agitating 
 the whole of society, can you see nothing but the
 
 2o6 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 underground work of a few conspirators? In this 
 ever-increasing sound of Peoples rising in their might, 
 of multitudes who desire to found a better future, of 
 oppressed races that demand their place in the light 
 of the sun, do you see nothing but the effect of an 
 obscure word thrown at a venture to the crowd, by 
 a few factious men ? 
 
 Men of the clergy, clear your minds of cant ! There 
 is in this an influence more serious and potent than 
 the vain conceit of a writer, or some rebels' plot. The 
 stake is the whole destiny of the civilised world, 
 ordered and impressed by the finger of God on the 
 heart of the generations. It sweeps you also along 
 with it in its advance. It involves a law of continual 
 progress of which we are the conscious or unconscious 
 agents, and without which there would be neither life, 
 nor progress, nor religion. If you oppose it, you are 
 fighting against Christ, against God, and against 
 Humanity — God's interpreter on earth. 
 
 Now, do you realise the effect of this impotent strife 
 of yours ? Do you see the fruit of your exertions among 
 the Peoples whom you wish to fetter ? 
 
 It is the fruit of scepticism, of doubt, of negation. 
 It is the fruit of anarchy in belief, and all the im- 
 morality that has its roots therein. Its offspring are 
 violent reactions, excesses of civil anger, the fires of 
 Bristol, or of the Spanish convents. It dissociates 
 religion from the great humanitarian movement. It 
 dishonours the priest and the altar. It destroys the 
 temple. It has ruined the people, and will ruin, if 
 you persevere long in your reactionary path, the Christian 
 faith and its future. 
 
 Ill 
 
 October 14, 1S35. 
 
 We addressed a few words to the authorities to this 
 effect : — Interfere as little as possible in religious ques- 
 tions. Allow them to develop freely in the field of 
 ideas \ do not be frightened by a few impotent, 
 secret agitators, who have no definite purpose, and
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 207 
 
 are condemned to fall of themselves into oblivion. 
 Do not be irritated by the vagaries of the factious 
 Catholic press, because the universal contempt will 
 set them at their value. The future unity of the 
 human family — social unify— is beyond your compre- 
 hension, belonging as you all do, body and soul, to 
 the old school and the old age. Your sole principle 
 is liberty, nothing more. At least be consistent, and 
 desire liberty in all things, liberty for all, for religious 
 society as for political society. Watch over and punish 
 acts that directly touch public order, the liberty and 
 safety of the citizens. Punish them from whatever 
 quarter they proceed, but do not claim attributes 
 outside your functions, or make yourselves dictators 
 in matters that do not concern you. Be not over- 
 zealous to prevent, since that is not your province. 
 The public law is sufficient to repress. 
 
 And we said to the factious priests, to the priests 
 who sell Christ a second time to the aristocracy and 
 the Princes of the earth : — Beware ! You are few in 
 number, and fallen from your high estate ; fallen 
 because of the countless faults of your leaders ; because 
 they have deserted the People's cause for that of their 
 masters, the cause of the poor for that of the idle 
 rich. You are fallen, because you have wedded religion 
 to material things, because you have made of public 
 worship an empty ceremony, and divided the sons of 
 God, cursing some and blessing others, while Christ 
 came to preach and pray and die for all. What is your 
 object ? The world moves ; progress is its law ; the 
 patriots are the faithful, the apostles of that law. Would 
 you try to stop the world, or infringe the law that God 
 has given it, or strive against his apostles ? That is 
 not in your power. Your opposition may indeed awaken 
 tremendous reactions, increase the germs of discord 
 which already exist, foment irreligion and scepticism, 
 discredit Christianity as you have discredited Catho- 
 licism. Is this your will ? So be it : but think upon 
 it, and remember that the flames of the Spanish con- 
 vents are but a reflection from the fires on which the
 
 2o8 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 Spanish monks a century ago burned the victims of 
 their intolerance and greed. 
 
 To-day we are forced to speak to you — priests, 
 patriots, men in authority, protestants and cathoHcs. 
 The few words we are about to say are directed to 
 you all. 
 
 The reaction is fatal to us ; each of us in this wretched 
 age absorbs some of its venom. There is a spirit of 
 hatred abroad that corrupts our best thoughts with 
 mutual hostility and mistrust. We talk of peace and 
 have curses on our lips ; we speak of liberty and father- 
 land in a tyrant's accents. We struggle without purpose 
 for the mere love of strife. This is the source of that 
 opposition of detail, which exhausts its strength on 
 minute points when it does not descend to personalities, 
 makes a great ado about petty applications of principles, 
 and then neglects the most important aspects of the 
 principles themselves. This is the origin of that cantonal, 
 parochial, sectarian spirit that predominates in all great 
 national and humanitarian conceptions, in all the ques- 
 tions on which depends in the last resort the peaceful 
 and orderly adjustment of our destinies. 
 
 And if we turn our attention to religion, we find yet 
 worse. 
 
 We are forced to steer between Scylla and Charybdis : 
 the intolerance of the priests, and the intolerance of the 
 patriots. On either side we find a spirit of pure reaction 
 and destruction. The former, out of hatred to Voltaire 
 and Rousseau — who nevertheless were as great believers 
 as any of them — would wish to abolish the printing- 
 press, destroy books, close schools, enthrone ignorance, 
 do violence to conscience. To listen to their pious 
 eloquence you would imagine them inquisitors in full 
 function. The latter, because they happened to en- 
 counter bigots and fanatics, because they saw despotism 
 disguising itself under the cloak of religion, and the 
 teaching of Christ corrupted in the hands of Popes, 
 deny religion, faith, and even religious philosophy. 
 They become materialists, sceptics, or, what is worse, 
 indifferent. They ignore the great services that strong
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 209 
 
 beliefs have rendered to the cause of Humanity. They 
 ignore how much there is that is noble and sublime and 
 potent in faith in a great religious principle. They forget 
 that religion is immortal, that it is born with the world, 
 and " will endure as long as the world shall endure," ^ — 
 and that materialistic theories lead directly to the 
 principle of individual interest, and hence to egotism 
 and all its attendant evils. 
 
 Yet, above all these petty contests of diocesan elec- 
 tions, of examinations, of jurisdiction, there exists some- 
 thing immeasurably greater, holier, more vital for the 
 Church, and conscience, and faith. Above all the 
 ecclesiastical diatribes, the futile demands of the par- 
 ticular absurdities of which the so-called religious 
 question is composed, there is something whose essence 
 is independent from, and alien to, all these squabbles ; 
 something immeasurably more important for our future, 
 for our social condition, for the growth of our Country. 
 We mean the religious sentiment. 
 The religious sentiment is the divine fount of all 
 religions, of all beliefs that have God for their beginning 
 and Humanity for their end, and which are animated by 
 the spirit, without which every belief is passive and 
 barren, every religion no more than a sect, every faith 
 but a tradition, a habit, and outward profession. 
 
 It is the religious sentiment which hallows the thoughts 
 and actions of Man, that ennobles the human creature 
 in his own eyes, and gives him the consciousness of a 
 mission to fulfil. It gives him the sense that God has 
 not cast him at a venture upon this earth of trial, but 
 that his existence is a function of universal life and 
 harmony, a link in the great chain of beings, a necessary 
 point in the line that connects Man with God and our 
 earth with His universe : it is that which makes all his 
 life a scene of self-sacrifice and charity. 
 
 The religious sentiment is brotherhood, and associa- 
 tion, and love. From it flow strength and constancy 
 in the struggle for these great principles, indifference to 
 danger, noble resignation in persecution and misfortune. 
 
 ' " Durera quanto il mondo lontana."— Dante, Inf. II. 60.
 
 210 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 Such is the religious sentiment, by means of which 
 alone you can advance along the path of progress ; for 
 materialism — be assured — however you may desire to 
 consider it, will verily give nothing but the consciousness 
 of your own individuality, the certainty of a few Rights, 
 the power to use them or not at will, or the habit of 
 seeking your own material success even at the cost of 
 your brother's weal, wherever society does not rebel and 
 allow it with impunity. But you will never draw from 
 materialism, either capacity for progress, or the virtue of 
 self-sacrifice and martyrdom. 
 
 Now, this religious sentiment is the foundation and 
 bond of all social fellowship, the only pledge of security 
 for the continuous and pacific progress of every people 
 that desires to be a nation, since it unites the souls of 
 men in one purpose, and refers to a superior laiv what 
 rival theories make the result of cha?ice and the moment's 
 ebb and flow, thus placing under God's own tutelage the 
 Rights, and happiness, and independence, and improve- 
 ment of the Peoples. How is it, then, we ask, that this 
 religious sentiment is wrecked, and whither will it 
 sink? 
 
 Where sink all good and great sentiments of the 
 human soul, when it has no guide save a narrow, con- 
 tentious, ambitious conception ; where all religions sink 
 when they forget the principle of love and brotherhood 
 that launched them on their way ; where all societies 
 sink when they substitute mere opposition for zeal in 
 good works, mistrust for unity, interests for duty. The 
 religious sentiment is declining day by day, is perishing 
 amid petty contests, amid the irritation born of barren 
 party strife, under the evil influence of an odious and 
 reactionary policy. Wherefore some among you — who 
 are prone to confound ideas with those who bring them 
 into disrepute, and institutions with those who profess 
 to represent them — speak evil of religion because it is 
 administered by false priests, of sacred things because 
 they are profaned by men, of beliefs because the blind 
 and ambitious have falsely interpreted them. Others, 
 conversely, deny progress because it was in some degree
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 211 
 
 misunderstood, and condemn the patriots because they 
 sometimes met in their ranks rogues and hypocrites. 
 They deny holy Liberty, Equality, the People, Associa- 
 tion, Humanity, because the long series of sacred and 
 high-principled struggles was interrupted by the sad days 
 of '93, when the People of France, goaded to excess, 
 attacked by all monarchical Europe on one side, and 
 domestic conspiracy on the other, swept along in a 
 terrible and unprecedented flood of reaction and 
 vengeance, that will never be repeated, because the 
 circumstances that produced it can never be repeated 
 anywhere. 
 
 This is our position to-day ; and when perchance from 
 one or the other of the two parties, some one comes forth 
 to join us, seeking to free Truth from the bands of dis- 
 cord that swaddle it, we distrust him as a hypocrite with 
 some secret, ulterior purpose, and we brand his quiet, 
 honest conduct as mere strategy. 
 
 This is the attitude of the clergy towards the patriots, 
 and this, too often, is the attitude of the patriots 
 towards a part of the clergy, who perhaps need only 
 to understand and believe in us in order to join our 
 ranks. 
 
 Now, if the clergy were to rally to us, or rather to 
 the holy belief that we preach concerning the words of 
 Christ, would the scepticism they deplore be so general 
 and hostile ? If they ceased to struggle against the light 
 of intelligence, and the movement that springs from it, 
 would they be defeated and routed by it, and should 
 we be divided from them ? We fight against scepticism 
 equally with them, and if we are not allowed a speedy 
 conquest, the fault is theirs, who make Christ's law and 
 God's progress the monopoly of a caste, who rob the 
 masses of their heritage of common rights, and their fair 
 share of the blessings that God has given to His creatures. 
 The clergy have the destinies of the Church in their 
 own hands : they will wreck it where they persist in the 
 narrow and reactionary path that they have followed so 
 long. 
 
 And if the patriots, the men of progress, would not,
 
 212 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 from excess of irritation, confound faith with its ministers, 
 religion with the priest ; if they were not too disposed 
 to exceed the bounds of moderation in the great move- 
 ment that urges us on ; if they did not believe it their 
 duty, through some feeling of mistaken dignity, to free 
 themselves at the same time from the religious principles 
 which alone can prepare the future ; if they did not for- 
 get so often how our fathers, when preparing themselves 
 for the battles of liberty, knelt before God, how they rose 
 up stronger after prayer, and conquered in the fight, 
 while we, though so proud and presumptuous before 
 God, drag the national flag in the mud and let our 
 country cringe to an ambassador ; if the patriots acted 
 otherwise, think you that all the clergy would oppose us ? 
 Think you not that honest and devoted men, who have 
 erred in good faith, would part themselves from the 
 majority, often greedy and radically immoral, and join 
 us ? And would you fear the predominance of what is 
 called the clerical party anywhere, where the people 
 found in you religion, the true religion, that shows itself 
 in good works, that loves and consoles, and consecrates 
 itself to the brethren ? 
 
 IV 
 
 October 17, 1835. 
 
 Rise to principles — to universals. Do not scorn truth 
 because men have obscured it. Strive rather to free it 
 from the errors which envelop it, and the prejudices 
 which corrupt it. Do not dash to pieces what has always 
 been the instrument of great deeds because some fanatic 
 has misconceived its omnipotent action. We are on the 
 threshold of a great Age, the Age of the Peoples. Learn 
 to understand the vast, sublime, religious meaning of 
 these words. Rise to the height of your mission as men 
 and citizens. The co-operation of all can alone achieve 
 the work of all. Seek such co-operation in all possible 
 ways with that sincerity of soul that wills the good. 
 There must be no revenge, no premeditated hostility, no 
 blind invectives against a whole order of persons. All
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 213 
 
 general invectives are unjust. Grieve for those who stray 
 from the right path, but do not persecute them. Do not 
 embitter your resentment with useless recrimination. 
 The past is nothing. Open your minds to our words : 
 ■we begin a new work. Let the angel of peace and 
 concord spread his wings over your young flag, and let 
 the spirit of love proceed, not only from your lips, but 
 from your hearts. Trust in God, in the goodness of 
 your cause, and in the power of Truth. Be faithful, and 
 you will conquer. 
 
 To the priests we say : Do not forget that all great 
 revolutions are fulfilled by virtue of a law ordained of 
 God to guide the motion of human affairs, and recognise 
 that what is seething around you to-day is a great revolu- 
 tion, not a mere revolt. Its development is at work in 
 the hearts of every People. In spite of every obstacle, 
 it has been gaining ground for the last fifty years, and 
 everything militates in its favour — its persistent and 
 cosmopolitan character, its audacity, its eloquence, its 
 self-sacrifice, its martyr's crown. To stand apart and 
 fight against it is to fight against God's will, and to part 
 oneself from Humanity, the interpreter and executor of 
 His commands ; it is to stand aside from God and the 
 movement of Humanity ; it is self-destruction. Re- 
 member that every social revolution must be either witJi 
 you or against you, and that if you ally religion to resist- 
 ance you wreck religion without profiting your cause. 
 Remember that the Church — the congregation of 
 THE FAITHFUL — whcn it is not an instrument of progress 
 becomes a corpse ; that it was instituted to hallow, to 
 harmonise, to unite, not to impede and divide the ele- 
 ments of life given by God to man ; that your mission is 
 to bless and not to curse. Remember that Christ Him- 
 self announced the New Age, in which the spirit would 
 come and reveal to us in pure truth what He could only 
 signify to us in Parables ^ ; and that, according to St . 
 Paul, we are destined here below, not to organise a 
 
 I 11 • 
 
 'The Spirit of Truth . . . the Comforter ... no more in proverbs 
 but plainly . . . will teach you all the Truth.'— John xiv. i6, 17, 26, 30 ; 
 XV, 26; xvi. 7, 13, 25.
 
 214 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 stationary City, but to seek and to attain to the holy City 
 of progress and of the future.^ 
 
 And to the patriots we say : Remember that our 
 doctrine is the doctrine of liberty and association ; that 
 we fight for all ; that our office is to unite and not to 
 divide ; that it is our duty to attack intolerance in what- 
 ever place and form it shows itself, and not to substitute 
 a new intolerance for the old one. Remember that it 
 is not given to you to found your authority, save upon a 
 general, immutable, eternal principle ; that this principle 
 is the Lazv of Progress ; that every law has its legislator ; ' 
 and that if you forget this you wander in the void, you 
 lose your rallying point, and leave your doctrines and 
 their triumph to chance. Remember that religion is a 
 want, a necessity of the People ; that all changes of form 
 that have been in the world have never succeeded in 
 extinguishing the religious sentiment ; and that if you 
 neglect this element of human nature, you condemn 
 yourself to a task that cannot be completed because it 
 has no organic vitality, you divide man and the world 
 into two parts, you rob your labour of a fruitful source 
 of activity, you deny that moral unity which is the end 
 and aim of every great revolution, and the necessary 
 condition of its permanency. And remember that every 
 social revolution is essentially religious ; that every Age 
 has its belief; that without unity of faith Association is 
 impossible ; that to preach Humanity, Fatherland, the 
 People — those great formulas of Association which 
 dominate our Age from on high — while you deny or 
 neglect the religious sentiment, is to misconceive the 
 significance of those words, to will the end without the 
 means, the work without the necessary instruments. 
 
 These are our beliefs, and they give our rule of action. 
 We ask those who have been educated in the habit of 
 mistrust, which is only too certainly the fruit of party 
 passion, and who might doubt a single instant our full 
 and entire good faith, to watch carefully our acts and 
 words ; and where they find us in one single instance in 
 
 ' " For here we have no abiding city, but we seek after the city which is 
 io conic." — Epistle to the Hebrews xiii. 14.
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 215 
 
 contradiction with ourselves, let them point it out : from 
 that day forth we will be silent. 
 
 We patriots, we men of a new Age, whose souls look 
 for a religious future for all Humanity, we are bound to 
 lift its banner boldly on high. We cherish in our hearts 
 the vision of a faith — not of a school — of progress and 
 successive improvement for the Peoples, and in particular 
 for our Country, which the Peoples will salute and 
 acknowledge as the land which has kept in trust for 
 them the germ of republicanism ; we cherish the vision 
 of a thorough and sincere agreement among all who 
 believe in Country and Humanity ; the vision of a union 
 of all societies in one great association, strong by its 
 activity, by its devotion, by its conscious rectitude and 
 one sacred belief for all — societies that to-day have no 
 flag, no principles, and therefore die of stagnation almost 
 before they are born, and never fulfil their national 
 mission ; the vision of a periodical Press animated by 
 brotherly sympathies, pressing to the same battles under 
 the same flag, intent to achieve its task without bitter- 
 ness, and spite, and jealousy, intent to gather to itself 
 the great Voice of the Nation, intent to fulfil one and 
 the same mission, because it is convinced that national 
 progress advances more rapidly when a People realises 
 and incarnates one single principle, than when it wages a 
 losing fight for a thousand petty details that even in the 
 mass would give no result, precisely because they do not 
 centre round one great constructive principle, set as the 
 keystone of the nation's structure. We cherish the hope 
 that patriots will arise, with deep convictions and vast 
 ideas, spurred onwards, not by threats of aristocratic 
 restorations, nor rumours of foreign wars, but because it 
 is a duty to advance along the road which our country's 
 welfare marks out ; because it is the office of a virtuous 
 man to contribute to the happiness of his fellows and 
 the perfecting of the nation's institutions, and because 
 the man who has a faith is bound to witness to it every 
 hour of the day. We look forward to a generation of 
 Swiss who will feel that they are free by their fathers' 
 heritage and by their own right, who will hold their
 
 2i6 The Patriots and the Clergy 
 
 heads high alike before enemies and friends, who with a 
 free and fearless soul will do what their own well-being 
 demands and conscience bids, who will not bow their 
 national pride before any man, who will put their trust 
 only in God, and in their own powers, and in the might 
 of the fraternity of nations — a true fraternity, not of vain 
 words, — an unresting activity,^a republican morality, — 
 a sincere faith, free from hypocrisy, and intolerance, and 
 prejudice. 
 
 And why should we exclude Christ's priests from this 
 movement of general consecration that we have foreseen, 
 in which, by virtue of its own intrinsic nature and its goal, 
 all classes, all orders, all sections of religious belief, all 
 men of good faith, will be gathered together ? Or rather, 
 why should not the priest of Christ take his place there 
 of right because of his faith ? And why should not his 
 blessing descend on the banner of the new crusade, on 
 the ardent souls of the young, in whom lies the future of 
 our Country? 
 
 We know that many will remain cold and impassible 
 to these words, these hopes, the enthusiasm that dictates 
 this language. The reactionary patriots will smile with 
 an air of scorn ; men whose hearts are perverted or 
 sealed by materialistic philosophy, will shrug their 
 shoulders. Let them go their ways. But we know, too, 
 that among those priests of Christ who stand aloof 
 because of false opinions concerning us, among men 
 whose hearts are sound, but who are mere tools and 
 counters in the hands of an immoral Power for ever 
 incapable of inspiring a faith that it has lost, there will 
 perchance be found some few who, when they hear 
 these words that come from our conscience and our 
 heart, will be moved to reflect upon the part they are 
 made to play, and the true import of the Jesuitical 
 schemes in which they have tried to entangle them ; to 
 feel that faith, true faith, is elsewhere ; that where the 
 spirit of God is, there is liberty ^ ; and that we, the friends 
 of liberty, are men who are true to God. 
 
 And we are comforted by the thought, that among 
 
 ' St. Piul.
 
 The Patriots and the Clergy 217 
 
 our readers, in some corner of our Switzerland, in the 
 recesses of our mountains, or maybe on some shore of 
 our blue and tranquil lakes, will be found perchance the 
 white and virgin soil of some virtuous youth that will 
 draw its inspiration from our faith, some mother who 
 loves in all holiness, and who will receive our words, and 
 gently whisper them in her children's ears. 
 And this is enough to recompense our labours.
 
 TO THE ITALIANS
 
 TO THE ITALIANS 
 
 The Programme of the ''■Roma del Popolo'^^ (1S71) 
 
 The first number of our publication appears on the 
 ninth of February. It bears in front the title, La 
 Roma del Popolo; at foot, the names of men who, 
 whatever may be their intellectual worth, have never, 
 despite delusions and baits of worldly success, despite 
 suffering, exile, imprisonment, denied the ideal of their 
 hearts. It should not, therefore, be necessary to lay a 
 programme before our readers. Everybody knows who 
 we are. Our programme, the Republican Unity of Italy, 
 dates back more than a third of a century. We have 
 been silent concerning it at times when the people had 
 strayed in opposite directions, and it needed experience 
 and disillusion to confirm its truth ; we have never 
 abdicated it. And to-day, more than ever convinced by 
 the experience of the last ten years, we raise again irs 
 Rome the flag we planted there forty years ago. Our 
 publication is the cry of the Italian conscience, to up- 
 hold that formula of the national life which historical 
 tradition and the instincts of our people have pointed 
 out, to condemn all that spirit of conventionality or 
 falsehood that betrays it with a kiss, or deliberately 
 denies it. 
 
 The ninth of February recalls a period, short but 
 splendid in glory and promise, when, in the face of a 
 policy of egotism and fear that obtained through Europe, 
 and while the monarchy was betraying the honour and, 
 future of Italy on the fields of Lombardy, at Milan and 
 Novara, Rome lifted her head in solemn protest from the 
 
 ' Rome of the People.
 
 222 To the Italians 
 
 grave, and sealed her protest with the blood of hei 
 noblest sons ; when she showed by the concord of her 
 citizens of every order, what time she drove the papacy 
 to dishonoured flight, and met four hostile nations in 
 manly fight, how much virtue of love and endurance the 
 ancient republican faith could one day rouse in Italian 
 hearts. A long probation in the school of political 
 Jesuitism, and servile patience, has worked since then to 
 extinguish the memory of those days in shameful oblivion. 
 But in Rome great memories have ever been the germs 
 of new life ; and if Romans have not changed their nature, 
 the memories of 1849 will flower again more quickly and 
 more efi"ectively than some imagine. Do you not see 
 how the monarchy, that was impelled to Rome by our 
 agitation, by talk of the Republic at Paris, how it shrank 
 timidly in apprehension from the need of planting itself 
 there permanently, how it strove for a delay of months, as 
 if it trembled at these memories, and the shades of the 
 generous souls that left them to your city as a sacred 
 legacy to be fulfilled ? 
 
 The title that we have chosen betokens the mission of 
 Rome in the world, and the historical evolution that calls 
 upon her to spread for the third time among the nations 
 a gospel of civilisation, a gospel of that moral unity which 
 has vanished for the present in the slow death-agony of 
 the ancient faith. " This Unity all pray for " — I wrote as 
 long ago as 1844 — "can come, Italians, whatever men may 
 ■do, from your country alone, and you can only write 
 it on the flag, which is destined to shine on high above 
 those two milliary columns, that mark the course of thirty 
 ■centuries and more in the world's life — the Capitol and 
 the Vatican. Rome of the Ca;sars gave the Unity of 
 civilisation that force imposed on Europe. Rome of 
 THE Popes gave a Unity of civilisation that Authority 
 imposed on a great part of the human race. Rome of 
 THE People will give, when you Italians are nobler than 
 you are now, a Unity of civilisation accepted by the free 
 consent of the nations for Humanity." And this faith, 
 that sustained our life through bitterest trials, is still ours. 
 The materialists who misgovern us see in Rome no
 
 To the Italians 223 
 
 more than a fraction of Italian earth, peopled by a certain 
 number of inhabitants capable of paying taxes and 
 furnishing armed levies : we look on Rome as the 
 sanctuary of the Nation, the Sacred City of Italy, the 
 Historic Centre, whence by providential mission came 
 Italy's message to Men, the message that makes for 
 unity, and our initiative in the world. A few months ago 
 they doubted the necessity of having Rome as a metro- 
 polis, and published in their newspapers the foolish and 
 wicked phrase, that Rome belonged to the Romans. To 
 us, Rome did, and does belong, to Italy, as Italy to 
 Rome. Country and metropolis form, like human 
 organism and brain, a whole, an indivisible unity. From 
 Rome must come, must permeate Humanity, that 
 message that the common thought of all Italy has shaped, 
 the message that two earlier worlds have baptized and 
 consecrated. Without a common faith, without concep- 
 tion of an ideal that shall bind the nations together, and 
 show to each its special function for the common good, 
 without unity of standard for its whole moral, political, 
 economic life, the world to-day is at the mercy of caprice, 
 of dynastic and popular ambition and egotism. The 
 initiative, which France has lost since 1815 lives no 
 longer, visible and accepted, in any people. England 
 deliberately abdicated it when she introduced, under 
 the name of non-intervention, a policy of local interests. 
 Germany threatens to sterilise all her vast power of 
 thought, by surrendering the action that should be 
 collective, and the formation of her unity, to a military 
 monarchy hostile to liberty. The Slav populations, 
 who have so great a part in the future reserved for 
 them, dismembered and without centre of national life, 
 still hesitate between the rule of a Czar fatal to them all, 
 and the old difificulty of local antagonisms. And, faced 
 by such a void, we — who are ready to hail and applaud 
 the initiative wherever it may arise — we cherish as the 
 ideal of our heart the sacred hope that it may arise on 
 the ruins of the Papacy and of every similar lie, from 
 the third Rome, from the Rome of the People. Re- 
 born at the cradle of an Age, Italy and Rome are called
 
 224 To the Italians 
 
 to inaugurate it, if only they know their destinies, and 
 the moral force they have behind them. 
 
 Unity at home, and a new development of civilisation 
 abroad — these two terms include the whole programme 
 of our publication. 
 
 But all great questions resolve themselves into a 
 question of method; the question, how can they pass 
 from the sphere of ideas into the sphere oi facts'? Can 
 we hope to conquer, and translate into action, the two- 
 fold e7id I have spoken of, with the institutions by which 
 we are governed ? Is the instrument that we can use 
 to-day equal to our purpose ? 
 
 Deliberately, but resolutely, and with firm conviction, 
 we answer : N'o I 
 
 We will not spin again the long and painful story 
 whose pages are marked with the names of Villafranca, 
 Nice, Venice begged as an alms from the foreigner, 
 Aspromonte, Mentona, Custoza, Lissa. Fatal and 
 pregnant with inevitable consequences as these pages 
 are, Prussia teaches us how even a monarchy might, if 
 it so willed, escape them and fight alone, and, trusting 
 to the national energy, win its own battles. We will not 
 mention, in condemnation of the monarchy, the financial 
 ruin passed on from ministry to ministry, aggravated by 
 an economy of petty expedients, met ineffectively by 
 immoral taxes that are a source of inequality and misery 
 to the present generation, or by onerous loans that 
 alienate and dry up future sources of wealth. Sully, 
 Colbert, Turgot, and others honest and capable as they, 
 were the ministers of monarchies ; and, though men 
 like them were few and far between, and they were 
 nearly all made powerless for good by a crowd of 
 courtiers that always dog the throne, they nevertheless 
 afford us glimpses of a possible selection of men better 
 than the feeble blunderers of to-day. We will not found 
 a theoretical attack on the habits of corruption now 
 prevalent in high places, on the subjection of the law 
 to the perennial caprice of individual administrators, on 
 the continual violation of the liberty of the Press and 
 the right of Association, on the absolute contempt for
 
 To the Italians 225 
 
 public opinion, on the hundred infringements of its duty 
 by every Department, which are brought to light month 
 by month and reported by every organ of the indepen- 
 dent daily press. Some might point to us, as a distant 
 hope, the example of the English monarchy, tolerant of 
 every liberty, abhorrent of absolute rule, and following, 
 though at a distance and imperfectly, the movement of 
 public opinion. And though the conditions of life in 
 England are, as we shall point out in this and subsequent 
 numbers, radically different from our own, though it may 
 seem strange and indecorous, that a people who have a 
 better path before them, should be content with the vain 
 hope that its rulers may, some day, choose this one 
 example out of all others to follow, still, we will respect 
 even that one example, and be silent concerning crimes 
 and vices that others might think are confined to a single 
 period. Our attack on the ruling form of government 
 has a higher source. 
 
 When a people has in the course of centuries defined 
 its own mission, and revealed, conquered, incarnated in 
 itself the principle that forms the essence of its life ; if 
 it is ruled by the form of government that has presided 
 over the long historical development of this priticiple ; 
 then that people has a vista of reforms before it, which 
 multiply the practical applications of this vital priticiple, 
 or slowly eliminate the defects inseparable from every 
 system of social polity. Such form of government can, 
 on condition that it preserve intact liberty oi thought and 
 of the individual, continue to direct, if only in appear- 
 ance, that slow movement of secondary manifestations. 
 But when the necessity of things, and of the times, 
 demands the manifestation of a new principle ; when it 
 is a question of defining a new mission, which, with its 
 new or regenerated people devotes itself to the European 
 task ; when everything points to the revelation of a new 
 conception of national or international life ; then there 
 inevitably begins a period of revolution. Reforms in- 
 spired by theories of the past become dangerous. The 
 form of government that ruled and represented, well or 
 ill, the old form of life and the formulas of the old
 
 226 To the Italians 
 
 doomed system, is incapable to direct the sudden, 
 spontaneous movement, and becomes an obstacle to 
 the attainment of the ideal. No form of government has 
 represented, or can represent in the world, two different 
 principles. New things ; new forms of Government : 
 new forms of government ; new men. 
 
 The Europe of to-day is, on the whole, we believe, 
 in this second stage, seeking, like the Israelites in the 
 desert, a promised land still unknown, — seeking a new 
 principle, a new order of things, since the old one is 
 exhausted. He who watches Europe under the light 
 of the great historical tradition, at once recurs to the 
 memory of those times that eighteen centuries ago 
 announced the slow breaking-up of Paganism, and the 
 inevitable rise of Christianity. The absence of an 
 initiative of any general and harmonious civilisation in 
 the world, the moral anarchy that is its consequence — 
 the wars promoted by the interests of dynasties or some 
 ■few individuals — the neutrality founded on the indiffer- 
 ence of egotism — the treaties of peace based on foolish 
 theories of an equilibrium which is impossible so long as 
 it takes into count material facts only — the question of 
 nationality, which to-day is dominant over all others, and, 
 as eighteen centuries ago, points to a new European 
 birth — the emancipation of the working classes which 
 has become, as in those times was the emancipation 
 of the slave, the universal subject of a powerful agita- 
 tion — the awakening of the Slav races, as in those days 
 of the Teutonic races, to a life that now is assured them 
 — the materialism — the exaggerated rejection of old 
 beliefs — the aspirations after new beliefs dawning 
 everywhere — the insensate attempts at an impossible 
 reconciliation between the old and the new — every- 
 thing points to the near advent of an order of things, 
 founded on principles radically different from those 
 that preceded the development of the present Age 
 that now is visibly exhausted. A new conception 
 of Life, and of the divine Law that governs it, 
 throbs in every manifestation of the two faculties of 
 thought and action, that make up the unity of human
 
 To the Italians 227 
 
 nature. Monarchy can neither strangle it nor make it 
 its handmaid. 
 
 Monarchy had its day and mission. It came to fight 
 and destroy /ei/da/isut, which was a system of territorial 
 dismemberment, that hindered all possibility of unity in 
 countries destined to form natiotis. Fronted by 2t. principle 
 of privilege based on mere force and conquest, the king, 
 himself head of the feudal aristocracy, came to wear out 
 and suppress its power, in the name of ^anoiher principle 
 of privilege, analogous to the first, but founded on 
 divine authority, and consecrated by the then recognised 
 interpreter of a living faith. This mission is the Justi- 
 fication of Monarchy in history. 
 
 To-day, the feudal organisation has disappeared for 
 ever, and with it the function that gave life to the 
 monarchical idea. A new conception, based on the 
 Divine Law of Progress, takes the place of the con- 
 ception that was based on the doctrines of the Fall 
 and the Atonement, and hence perishes the Papacy, 
 the authority that ordained the monarch for his 
 function. 
 
 The world is seeking, not the material solidarity which 
 is now assured, and which is only the outward form of 
 the nations, but the vivifying spirit that shall guide their 
 life towards its end ; the moral unity that can only be 
 based on the association of men and nations equal and 
 free. Monarchy, based upon the doctrine of inequality, 
 on the privilege of an individual or of a family, can 
 never give that unity. The flag that leads towards that 
 destined future means Progress, and dynastic interests 
 means stagnation. Now that its end is reached and its 
 doctrine rejected, the monarchy, like the Papacy, lacks 
 some foundation and potency of life. Throughout 
 Europe monarchy either folloivs or resists the impulse 
 that comes from elsewhere : nowhere it initiates or leads. 
 Constitutional compromise, concessions that contain 
 within themselves their own condemnation, attempt an 
 impossible equilibrium between two powers de facto, that 
 lean on the past, and a third power de Jure, that moves 
 with irresistible and swifter step towards its future. This
 
 228 To the Italians 
 
 can only end in the rejection oi progress, and the necessity 
 of violent and periodical revolutions. 
 
 We shall often have to speak of this condition of 
 things in Europe. But if we look at Italy, our position 
 becomes clearer, and is much strengthened by the 
 history of the past and present. 
 
 Monarchy has no traditions in Italy. It has never 
 been a source of national life. The captains who, 
 strong by means of corruption and mercenary pretorian 
 troops, degraded ancient Roman Italy from the glories 
 and titanic energy of the Republic to the Empire, only 
 hastened the work of dissolution that had already set 
 in, extinguished all power of conception and will, and 
 opened the way to the invaders of the North. In the 
 second life of Italy and Rome, Monarchy had no 
 mission, not even that which we mentioned as fulfilled 
 by it in every other country. Feudalism was destroyed 
 by our republican Communes. When, after a long period 
 that gave the world a new civilisation, our slow death- 
 agony began, under the solvent agency of the Papacy, 
 amidst the materialism that swept over us, the civil wars, 
 and the abuse of riches and power, then principalities 
 arose under the auspices of successful condottieri, men 
 whom the factious imprudently took as their leaders, or 
 the nephews or bastards of ambitious Popes ; all of them 
 supported by the foreigner, who wished to divide us that 
 he might tyrannise over us ; all vassals of France, or 
 Austria, or Spain, sometimes servants of all three in 
 turn. The sad pages of the history of our princes have 
 no virtue or greatness to recall. 
 
 They naturally sought aggrandisement at the expense 
 of their neighbouring rivals, more by intrigue or matri- 
 monial and mercenary alliances than by open war. Not 
 one was thrilled by a great Italian ideal, a vast ambition 
 of a Nation founded by its own strength. Monarchy 
 neither did, nor attempted, anything for the Unity or 
 Liberty of the Country. It lived inglorious, satisfied to 
 exist even at the cost of dishonour, a persecutor of 
 thought in the domain of religious and political belief, 
 a corrupting influence in the field of Letters. When
 
 To the Italians 229 
 
 France arose to epitomise an age, to solemnly pro- 
 claim the Kig/its of the individual, our princes at first 
 threatened, without prowess to perform, then fled. When 
 they returned, not by their own efforts, but through the 
 arms of others, they punished the peoples for having 
 witnessed their flight. In Turin, Modena, Naples, 
 Rome, every aspiration after a free Country and national 
 unity, even when offered as a new jewel for their crown, 
 was inexorably proscribed, stifled in blood by the bullet 
 and the gallows. Journalists may be bought, records 
 suppressed or kept closed to investigation, men may 
 be cowards and forget their mission and their power, 
 but that page of history can never be blotted out. 
 Italy has no debt of gratitude, or aught else, to 
 princes. 
 
 One day, three-and-twenty years ago, the idea, 
 triumphant as ever over every persecution, rose, with 
 potency of life and holy daring, from the grave where 
 the princes thought to have buried it for ever. The 
 people of Italy, in their own name, and without the 
 intervention of regular troops, won battles of giants. 
 They might, they should have gathered for themselves 
 the fruits of their own victories ; but, intoxicated by 
 their independence of the foreigner, and only half-awake 
 to the consciousness of liberty, they brought them to 
 the feet of the Monarchy. Then was the time, had 
 the Monarchy possessed a single spark of Genius or 
 Love, to transform itself, receive the nation's baptism, 
 and initiate itself to destinies till then ignored or 
 betrayed. The Monarchy did not rise to the occa- 
 sion. It entered the lists, late, hesitating, reluctant. 
 It was, by its own confession, decided solely by the 
 fear of republican movements. It could not fight, it 
 would not conquer ; it feared the deluded and applaud- 
 ing people more than the enemy, and embraced the 
 opportunity of the first reverse to descend to dishonour- 
 able treaties and withdraw from the war. Then Venice 
 and Rome alone, unable to do more, saved, under the 
 republican flag, the honour of the nation and its hopes 
 for the future.
 
 230 To the Italians 
 
 Ten years later, when passions again were hot, and 
 destinies were ripe, the only statesman of the Italian 
 Monarchy, a man without creative genius, but endowed 
 with the ability to use others' talents, saw that it was 
 necessary to advance or perish. He drove the monarchy 
 along paths it loved not, lest others should seize upon 
 them. And, nevertheless, even he was unable to over- 
 come the fatal destiny of the monarchical idea he 
 served. Unwilling to avail himself of the popular forces 
 of Italy, and anxious to secure an ally against them in 
 the future, he cringed, and bought with shameful com- 
 pacts an alliance with the despot who had slaughtered 
 Rome at the feet of the Pope. He condemned the 
 national flag to be subject to the beck and call, the 
 errors, the crooked schemings of Imperial France. 
 Though Garibaldi proved soon afterwards that he could 
 win unaided what our ally had so suddenly abandoned, 
 the Monarchy accepted as the ally's gracious gift, those 
 fields of Lombardy that our people and our army had 
 dyed with their own blood, and then stopped halfway to 
 move no farther unless constrained. Men, who to serve 
 the royalist party look at the consequences, not the 
 causes of facts, may say to-day what they please ; but 
 History and the Italian conscience will one day say 
 that the popular element desired unity when the 
 Monarchy was dreaming of royalist alliances with 
 Bourbon, Pope, and Austria, — that the scheme, which 
 the royalist intriguers favoured, of a Buonapartist kingdom 
 in the centre of Italy was defeated by the efforts of us 
 all, by the popular plebiscites, — that the emancipation 
 of the South of Italy was won by volunteers and the 
 populace,^that the invasion of the provinces subject 
 to the Pope was an inevitable necessity created by the 
 preparations for our powerful expeditions from Tuscany 
 and Genoa, and by the clear intentions of Garibaldi, — 
 that Venetia was another gift, — that, but for the terror 
 excited by the bands of Calabria and of the Centre, by 
 the risings at Piacenza and Pavia, by the movements 
 which were feared at other places, and by the sudden 
 inauguration of the Republic at Paris, the Monarchy
 
 To the Italians 231 
 
 would not be in Rome to-day. No, we repeat, Italy has 
 n o debt of gratitude, or aught else, to princes. 
 
 A Government — and it is singular that we who are 
 christened Utopians must remind the " practical " men 
 of this — is not an organisation that is invented or 
 established a priori, copied from England or some other 
 country, and arbitrarily thrust upon a nation without 
 relation to its traditions, its inherent tendencies, its 
 common beliefs — in a word, its collective conscience. A 
 Government, to be legitimate and effective, must grow 
 out of the whole of these conditions, as a branch, or 
 rather as the fruit, grows from a tree. 
 
 The form of government must, if it is not to be 
 injurious or useless, represent the sum-total of the 
 integral elements of the country, must represent the 
 thought that is its soul, the consciousness of the ideal to 
 which the millions of men who are grouped within its 
 natural boundaries strive instinctively. The function of 
 government is to purify that thought from every foreign 
 element, to show the method best calculated to reach the 
 ideal, and initiate the progressive stages that lead to it. 
 On these conditions — but on these conditions only — we 
 are the friends of government, and part from the theories 
 of reaction and systematic mistrust, that, at the present 
 day, dominate a great part of our camp. Those theories 
 are the natural fruit of the wretched Governments that 
 nearly everywhere rest on caste, or family interests in 
 opposition to the interests of the people ; they are 
 legitimate arms of defence against recurring dangers. 
 But, if they became a doctrine applicable to every set of 
 circumstances in the future, they would falsify every 
 conception of government, and the antagonism they 
 would create between government and governed would 
 be a source of never-ending war, destructive of all 
 progress. 
 
 In the ideal that Europe is seeking, and will realise, 
 the Government will be the mind of a Nation, the people 
 its arm, and the educated and free individual its prophet 
 of future progress. The first will point out the path 
 that leads to the ideal, which at present is the only
 
 232 To the Italians 
 
 thing that makes a Nation. The second will direct 
 the forces of the country towards it. The third will 
 protest in the name of a new and further ideal, against 
 intolerance, and every tendency to deny the possibility 
 of unlimited progress. ^ 
 
 Meanwhile the Monarchy, a stranger to the National 
 idea, without historical antecedents, without roots con- 
 nected with the tree of Italian life, necessarily miscon- 
 ceives the meaning of events and the needs of the time. 
 In a new event of European importance that is destined 
 to initiate an Age, it saw nothing more than a question of 
 dynasty, the sequel of a small continuous movement of 
 aggregation to the territory of a royal house. It annexed, 
 like new links to an old chain, the peoples who rose and 
 embraced in the prophetic heart-beats of a third life, and 
 repeated, " the moment has arrived to become a Nation." 
 This Nation, which brings to Humanity a potential force 
 of incalculable strength, whose every fraction has written 
 a luminous page in the history of the world, this living 
 Being, the product of thirty centuries of labour, it would 
 not even allow to question its own mind concerning the 
 law of its own life. It was imprisoned, so to speak, in 
 the royal interpretation of a form of government which 
 represented the bygone life of a small population, ^ Italian 
 true, and dear to us, but parted from us while it had that 
 form. And we are now the only people who have risen 
 to a unity of collective existence without a National 
 Contract, which the best of the nation have deliberated 
 on, and the consent of the majority has made authori- 
 tative. 
 
 In an event which shows that the political doctrine of 
 Nationality, and a new European birth are the meaning 
 of the universal agitation, it merely sees the addition of a 
 new member to old Europe, to the old Diplomacy, to the 
 doctrines of ancient treaties. It allied Italy with despotic 
 Governments, with all the compromises that try to main- 
 
 ' Almost every line of this essay would require an expansion that 
 cannot be given here; but the reader will understand that this is a 
 programme on which the successive numbers of the publication will 
 be a commentary. 
 
 - Piedmont.
 
 To the Italians 233 
 
 tain the impossible status gtco. In the duahsm between 
 us and the Papacy, from which, with the latter's fall, our 
 religious mission in the world was to be initiated, it only 
 saw the means of acquiring a patch of territory, and 
 narrowed the solution of an immense and fateful problem, 
 to a bastard compromise between soul and body, between 
 the moral and material, between Truth and Falsehood. 
 To develop and direct the Italian conception of Unity, 
 it chose, and chooses, men who never believed in it, the 
 advocates of federalism, the men who at one time perse- 
 cuted its apostles. 
 
 The sense that they have no bond of intelligence and 
 love with the Nation, forces the Government to dread 
 popular progress, and adopt a policy of resistance. Its 
 rule is, never to give way to public opinion, except when 
 it threatens to break out irresistibly in open conflict. 
 
 This is the fundamental basis of our attack. The rest, 
 the perversion of the army from its primitive and only 
 mission, the safeguarding of the national soil and ho?wur, 
 to become an instrument of repression within the country, 
 the creation of an army of useless officials, to acquire an 
 undue influence in the provinces, the repudiation of local 
 liberties, the absence of an international policy, the ruin 
 of the finances, a system of unjust and excessive taxation, 
 are only a series of consequences which logically derive 
 from that first irrevocable set of circumstances. 
 
 Those who deny this in the face of History and the 
 most recent events, delude themselves. Those who, in 
 the Chamber or outside, attempt to guide Italy to its ideal 
 without first removing this source of all our difficulties, 
 deceive themselves and the country. They are laying 
 up for themselves — and we deplore it — discredit and 
 isolation. They are laying up for the country yet more 
 prolonged and violent crises, the more violent the more 
 Italy stands in an exceptional position, — the position of 
 a Nation in process of formation, for which, like a child, 
 any deviation from the standard that educates to high 
 and noble things may have a peculiarly and terribly fatal 
 result. 
 
 To us the question is wholly a moral one. A form of
 
 234 To the Italians 
 
 government either leads to good or corrupts. A form 
 of government that is based on lies, or that has no life, 
 and therefore cannot infuse it, condemns the country — 
 whether consciously or unconsciously is immaterial — to 
 a career of errors and crimes, or else by breaking up the 
 moral unity of the Nation, and condemning it to a war 
 of its own members that fetters its movements, ends by 
 making it sceptical and egotistic, and drugging it to 
 sleep. And sleep for a people of ancient growth, strong in 
 the education of the centuries, and recognised by the other 
 peoples as having largely fulfilled its mission, for such a 
 people sleep is more or less dishonourable, but not 
 deadly. But sleep, or long delay, is at once dishonour- 
 able and deadly to a people like ours, that is rising to 
 become a Nation, and must therefore of necessity grow, 
 and yet cannot without a power to direct its forces to one 
 end, a people that is pondering the road it has to follow, 
 the road which will determine the acceptance or refusal 
 of brotherhood with other Nations. 
 
 To one who sees in a Nation something more than an 
 aggregation of individuals born to produce and consume 
 corn, the foundations of its life are, fraternity of faith, 
 consciousness of a common ideal^ and the association of 
 all faculties to work in harmony and with success towards 
 that ideal. You cannot make it believe that life and 
 growth are possible in a never-ending dualism between 
 its government and itself; that the temple of its worship 
 can have privilege written on its summit and equality on 
 its base ; or that it can live, a useless member of the 
 European family, abdicating every duty, every office, 
 every mission for the good of others, concentrating all its 
 activity on the petty interests of the individuals that 
 compose it, without debasing its moral sense, its intelli- 
 gence, the exercise of its faculties, or compassing its own 
 destruction in loss of confidence, and apathy, and doubt. 
 And we see the symptoms of this growing only too fast. 
 The Italy of to-day is no longer the Italy of i860. The 
 masses, cheated of the vast hopes they entertained at one 
 time of the benefits of Unity, are fast losing the national 
 political sense, and lending an eager ear to the fatal
 
 To the Italians 235 
 
 whisperings of a federalist school that was dumb ten years 
 ago. The middle class is becoming — as its abstention 
 from the elections proves — more and more indifferent to 
 the exercise of its political rights. The Chamber, part 
 of it blindly subservient to government influence, part of 
 it tied by the narrow formula which the Deputies swear, 
 though they know it to be false and hurtful, has parted 
 with its initiative, and is every day losing the importance 
 that should belong to it. A feeling of torpor, the feeling 
 of a man who sees no remedy for recurring dangers, 
 infects men's minds with scepticism, and entices them 
 from the public arena to the exclusive care of their own 
 private concerns. What between the examples given in 
 high places, and the logical consequences of the spread 
 of materialism, which is partly the result of the Govern- 
 ment's false tactics towards a dying religion, morality is 
 losing its hold on the public mind. This is how Nations 
 die, not how they are born. 
 
 It is high time to leave a policy of expedients, of 
 opportunism, of entanglements and crooked ways, of 
 parliamentary hypocrisy, concealment, and compromise, 
 that characterises the languid life of worn-out nations, 
 and return to the virgin, loyal, simple, logical policy that 
 derives directly from a moral standard, that is the con- 
 sequence of a xnWng principle that has always inaugurated 
 the young life of peoples that are called to high 
 destinies. 
 
 The first condition of this life is the solemn declara- 
 tion, made with the unanimous and free consent of our 
 greatest in wisdom and virtue, that Italy, feeling the 
 times to be ripe, rises with one spontaneous impulse, in 
 the name of the Duty and Right inherent in a people, to 
 constitute itself a Nation of free and equal brothers, and 
 demand that rank which by right belongs to it among 
 the Nations that are already formed. The next condition 
 is the declaration of the body of religious, moral, and 
 Y)oy\iiC2i\ principles in which the Italian people believes at 
 the present day, of the common ideal to which it is- 
 striving, of the special mission that distinguishes it from 
 other peoples, and to which it intends to consecrate itself
 
 236 
 
 To the Italians 
 
 for its own benefit and for the benefit of Humanity, And 
 the final condition is to determine the methods to be 
 employed, and the men to whom the country should 
 delegate the function of developing the national con- 
 ception of life, and the application of its practical con- 
 sequences to the manifold branches of social activity. 
 
 Without this, a country may exist, stumbling along from 
 insurrection to insurrection, from revolution to revolution; 
 but there cannot exist a Nation. 
 
 And these three conditions can only be fulfilled by a 
 National Contract, dictated in Rome by a constituent 
 assembly elected by direct or indirect ^ suffrage, and by 
 all the citizens that Italy contains. 
 
 The National Contract is the inauguration, the baptism 
 of the nation. It is the initiative that determines the 
 normal life, the successive and peaceful development of 
 the forces and faculties of the country. Without that 
 initiative, which gives life to the exercise of the vote, 
 and directs it to the common ideal under the guidance 
 of di principle and a moral doctrine, even popular suffrage 
 is at the mercy of arbitrary influence, or the passions of 
 the day, or the false suggestions of ambitious agitators. 
 Plebiscites taken under circumstances like these, the 
 perverted and unenlightened expression of mere brute 
 numbers, have, within the space of a few years, led, and 
 will lead again, to a republic, a limited monarchy, and 
 the despotism of a Bonaparte. Until a people is educated 
 to uniformity and brotherhood, the initiative determines 
 in every place and time the character of the solemn acts 
 to which the masses are called. 
 
 Every one knows what is the form of government that 
 we believe to be the logical deduction from the principles 
 in which we believe, and from the national Italian 
 tradition : we define it as the developinent and application 
 of a Nation's ideal, duly entrusted by the chosen of the 
 Co2intry to men of recognised capacity and proven virtue. 
 We hope to show in our publication how it is only by 
 adopting this formula of government that Italy can 
 
 ' The writer prefers an indirect suffrage in two removes; but this is a 
 cuestion to be discussed in one of the ensuing: numbers.
 
 To the Italians 237 
 
 escape an indefinite series of more or less fatal crises, 
 and fulfil her destinies, great, prosperous, educated to 
 virtue. Quite recently it was said to us by partisans of 
 the government : " Write and discuss with us. Every 
 way of public propaganda is open to you. Why is that 
 not enough ? We have a right to combat conspiracies 
 and attempts at insurrection ; but we will all respect the 
 peaceful and philosophical expression of ideas." We 
 reply once again to the invitation, and write. We have 
 often attempted it, but the Government did not keep 
 faith with its interpreters, and answered our statements,, 
 even when they only repeated the pages of History, by 
 sequestrating our property, and prosecuting us, without 
 any one protesting against its action. 
 
 Nevertheless, we make another attempt, if only to see 
 whether the Government can ever learn wisdom, or if 
 the men who gave this invitation will join us to protect 
 liberty of thought. Our publication is frankly Republican,, 
 but it will not call to arms, or teach the people to rise,, 
 or provoke rebellions. 
 
 When Italians are once convinced they will act for 
 themselves. We, who are ever ready to follow them by 
 any means, or any paths that may lead, without crime, 
 to the ideal, will use the present to meet the errors 
 and prejudices which are constantly turning many 
 minds from the idea that is the basis of our mission. 
 When we undertake to discuss in theory the present 
 and future condition of Italy, Italians will be able 
 to gauge from the attitude of the Government towards 
 us the measure of its conscientiousness and moral 
 strength. 
 
 And we will, above all, meet the errors that proceed 
 from our own camp, and degrade, and warp, or lessen 
 the purity of our Ideal. Many of the accusations that 
 come from the opposite camp do not merit any lengthy 
 refutation. Those who even now speak of anarchy and 
 feebleness as inseparable from republican institutions, 
 we can meet with the miracles of progress and power 
 recently performed by the United States, and the steady 
 peace which reigns by the side of liberty in the valleys-
 
 238 
 
 To the Italians 
 
 of Switzerland. Those who are not ashamed to cast 
 in our teeth their childish suspicions of popular tyranny, 
 or terrorism, or spoliation, we can answer with the 
 names of Venice and Rome, and all that we have done 
 or written during the last forty years. But the material- 
 ism that shatters the unity of human nature, and while 
 it supplies us with an object, suppresses all the noble 
 impulses, all the sacred beliefs that stimulate us to fulfil 
 it, — the false philosophies that lead, consciously or un- 
 consciously, to the worship of accomplished facts, and 
 success, and Force, — the schools of politics and of 
 economics that select a single instance from among the 
 manifold integral terms of the social problem, and deduce 
 from it the solution of all secondary problems, — the 
 blind, servile copying of the old French Revolution, 
 still rooted only too deeply in most of our hearts, that 
 fetters us with theoretical formulas of individual rights 
 which are but the summary expression of a dead age 
 which we have abandoned for the initiative of the future 
 age, — the excessive tendency to mete out the same blame, 
 the same suspicion, so often unjust, to many who, like 
 us, love the Fatherland, but are intellectually at fault 
 as to method, that we mete to the few selfish schemers 
 who, through thirst of lucre and power, consciously 
 defile and betray the National Italian Revolution, — the 
 narrow-mindedness that anathematises a grand and fruit- 
 ful past out of hatred to a poor and feeble present, that 
 falsifies History, that tries to deprive us of our glories, 
 and denies the tradition which is the very life of Human- 
 ity, — all these deserve, and we will give them, an 
 attentive and thorough examination. It is these and 
 -other errors brought to our Democracy from foreign 
 schools of thought that have made the Italian intellect 
 -Stray from the right path. 
 
 It is time to call it back from barren criticism to the 
 National School, with its constructive methods, its ten- 
 dencies to correlate and harmonise ; from a materialism 
 that presumes to understand, explain, determine motion 
 -while it destroys the motive power, to the old ever- 
 present doctrine of the Spirit that harmonises motion
 
 To the Italians 239 
 
 and motor. As far as our powers permit we will try to 
 accomplish this. 
 
 Only on this condition can our National Revolution 
 be achieved. Blind revolts lead only to victories of a 
 day. Simple negations can overthrow an old worn-out 
 edifice ; they never lay the foundations of a new one ; 
 they never win a people to organised and effective action, 
 or build the Temple of the Nation. 
 
 Our party is faithful to the ideal of our country's 
 Traditions, but ready to harmonise them with the 
 Traditions of Humanity and the inspirations of con- 
 science ; it is tolerant and moral, and it must therefore 
 now confute, without attacking or misconstruing motives. 
 We need not fear that we are forging weapons for the 
 enemy, if we declare the religions of the world to be 
 successive expressions of a series of ages that have 
 educated the human race ; if we recognise the religious 
 faculty as eternal in the human soul, eternal, too, the 
 bond between heaven and earth. We can admire in 
 Gregory VII. the gigantic energy of will, the sublime 
 moral effort that could not be realised with the instru- 
 ment that Christianity could lend, and, at the same 
 time, in the name of the progress we have made, declare 
 the Papacy to be for ever dead. We can recognise the 
 Mission which Aristocracy and Monarchy had for other 
 peoples in the past, and yet proclaim, for all of us, the 
 duty and the right to outstrip those worn-out forms. We 
 may, without denying the reverence due to Authority — 
 for that is the real object of all our efforts — claim the 
 task of attacking every Authority that is not based on 
 two conditions — the free and enlightened consent of 
 the governed, and the power of directing the national 
 life and making it fruitful. 
 
 We believe in God. 
 
 In a providential Law given by Him to life. 
 
 In a Law, not of the Atonement, not of the Fall, 
 and Redemption by the grace of past or present 
 mediators between God and man, but of Progress, 
 unlimited Progress, founded on, and measured by, 
 our works.
 
 240 To the Italians 
 
 In the Unity of Life, misunderstood, as we believe, 
 by the Philosophy of the last two centuries. 
 
 In the Unity of the Law through both the manifesta- 
 tions of Life, collective and individual. 
 
 In the immortality of the Ego, which is nothing but 
 the application of the Law of Progress, revealed be- 
 yond doubt now and for ever by Historical Tradition, 
 by Science, by the aspirations of the soul, to the Life 
 that is manifested in the individual. 
 
 In Liberty, by which alone exists responsibility, the 
 consciousness and price oi progress. 
 
 In the successive and increasing association of all 
 human faculties and powers, as the sole normal means 
 o{ progress, at once collective and individual. 
 
 In the Unity oi the human race, and in the moral 
 equality of all the children of God, without distinction 
 of sex, colour, or condition, to be forfeited by cri??ie 
 alone. 
 
 And hence we believe in the holy, inexorable, domin- 
 ating idea of Duty, the sole standard of Life. Duty 
 that embraces in each one, according to the sphere in 
 which he moves and the means that he possesses. 
 Family, Fatherland, Humanity. Family the altar of the 
 Fatherland ; Fatherland the sanctuary of Humanity ; 
 Humanity a part of the Universe, and a temple built to 
 God, who created the Universe, that it might draw near 
 to Him. Duty, that bids us promote the progress of 
 others that our own may be effected, and of ourselves 
 that it may profit that of others. Duty, without which 
 no right exists, that creates the virtue of self-sacrifice, 
 in truth the only pure virtue, holy and mighty in 
 power, the noblest jewel that crowns and hallows the 
 human soul. 
 
 And finally, we believe, not in the doctrines of the 
 present day, but in a great religious manifestation 
 founded upon these principles, that sooner or later will 
 arise from the initiative of a people of freemen and be- 
 lievers — perhaps from Rome if Rome knows her mission 
 — and which, while it includes that chapter of Truth 
 that former religions won, will reveal yet another chapter,
 
 To the Italians 241 
 
 and will open the road to future progress, destroying 
 in their germ all privilege and intolerance of caste. 
 
 We have wished to express our principles briefly, that 
 all who wish to help us may know what are the condi- 
 tions of fellowship on which we will gratefully accept 
 their help and counsel. From these derive all the rules 
 that we prefix to questions of the intellect, and politics, 
 and economics. We believe that to make politics an art, 
 and sever them from morality, as the royal statesmen and 
 diplomatists desire, is a sin before God and destructive 
 to the peoples. The etid of politics is the application of 
 the moral Law to the civil constitution of a Nation in 
 its double activity, domestic and foreign. The etid of 
 economics is the application of the same Law to the 
 organisation of Labour in its double aspect, production 
 and distribution. All that makes for that etid is Good 
 and must be promoted ; all that contradicts it or gives 
 it no help must be opposed till it succumb. People 
 and Government must proceed united, like thought and 
 action in individuals, towards the accomplishment of that 
 mission. And what is true for one Nation is true as be- 
 tween Nations. Nations are the individuals of Humanity. 
 The internal national organisation is the instrument with 
 which the Nation accomplishes its mission in the world. 
 Nationalities are sacred, and providentially constituted to 
 represent, within Humanity, the division or distribution of 
 labour for the advantage of the peoples, as the division 
 and distribution of labour within the limits of the state 
 should be organised for the greatest benefit of all the 
 citizens. If they do not look to that end they are useless 
 and fall. If they persist in evil, which is egotism, they 
 perish : nor do they rise again unless they make Atone- 
 ment and return to Good. 
 
 But to staunch the two sources of our worst wounds, 
 — the dissension between the Government and the 
 governed, and the selfishness that dominates indi- 
 viduals, — we must constitute a Government that repre- 
 sents the mind, the tendencies, the duties of the Nation, 
 and we must determine the National ideal, the origin 
 and standard of our duties. The former is a problem
 
 242 To the Italians 
 
 of form to be solved, in any practical way, by the 
 initiative of the whole country ; the latter must be solved 
 by the delegates of the nation, who shall make a 
 National Contract, and found a system of national 
 and compulsory Public Education, which the Contract 
 shall determine. 
 
 For both, the preliminary and essential question is to 
 recognise and proclaim where the Sovereignty resides. 
 
 Two Schools, both foreign, both founded on that dis- 
 memberment of the unity of human nature to which we 
 have drawn attention, now hold the field, and solve in 
 their several ways the philosophico-religious, political, 
 and economic questions that are exciting interest in 
 Europe. 
 
 The first places sovereignty in the individual, in the 
 Ego. With no conception of Law, and hence none of 
 collective duty, it finds, wherever it turns, a partial, 
 temporary expression of life, the doctrine of Rights 
 supreme, inviolable; it bases all organisation on this 
 latter doctrine. The spontaneous action of the indi- 
 vidual, whether it leads to a power that is only de 
 facto, or whether it instinctively reaches a standard of 
 justice and truth, always bears, in its eyes, the mark of a 
 Sovereignty. According to the disciples of this school, 
 self-interest, or if that be insutificient, the action of the 
 preponderant force, is sufficient to prevent the inevit- 
 able conflicts among all these petty local sovereignities 
 from degenerating into civil war. This School leads, in 
 Religion, to protestantism with the more timid, who stop 
 halfway ; to materialism with those whose logic is more 
 thorough. In politics it leads to federalism, to the 
 almost absolute independence of local interests, to 
 absolute liberty of education, to systematic distrust of all 
 governmental control, and in international life to non- 
 intervention. In economics it leads to unlimited com- 
 petition, to the recognition of every acquired right with- 
 out considering whether it is fatal to the progress of the 
 majority, to the unrestricted doctrine of laisser faire. It 
 accepts liberty alone among human faculties as the basis 
 of civil society. The State is regarded as merely an
 
 To the Italians 243 
 
 aggregation of individuals, without any common ideal 
 except the satisfaction of personal iftterests ; the Nation 
 as an aggregation of Communes, all sovereign and arbiters 
 of their own development ; and Government as a neces- 
 sary evil, to be limited as much as possible, and confined 
 to the exercise of a coercive force in cases of mutual 
 robbery or slaughter. 
 
 The other School is opposed to the first on every 
 point. It places sovereignty exclusively in the collective 
 will, in the " We,'' and inevitably concentrates it slowly 
 in the hands of a few, if not of a single man. The State 
 is everything: the individual practically nothing. The 
 social ideal is absolutely binding, and must be accepted 
 by him. The Nation absorbs all independent local life 
 in a strong centralised government. The ideal that 
 directs the Nation is supposed, theoretically, to be 
 founded on the good; practically it is neither confirmed, 
 nor elaborated, nor modified by the intervention, of the 
 free examination or consent of the citizens. According 
 to their system, the best are, and ought to be, called to 
 apply it, but not by the people ; they, the majority at 
 least, have no part in the choice of the few who are 
 already declared to be the most capable of the nation. 
 Associatiofi is predetermined and ordained; but by 
 authority and on a uniform and fixed plan. The in- 
 struments of Labour and of Production are one by one 
 handed over to the State. The conditions of distribu- 
 tion are decided by authority. This school leads, in 
 religion, to Catholicism with the timid ; to Fatitheistn 
 with the strong-minded. In politics it leads to despotism, 
 whether of one, or a few, or many, is immaterial. In 
 -economics it leads to the search — the probably fruitless 
 search— for a limited degree of material prosperity, at 
 the cost of all possibility of progress or of increased 
 production, at the cost of every stimulus to the growth 
 of activity, the inventiveness, the initiative of the indi- 
 viduals. Just as Liberty is everything to the former 
 School, so is Authority to this. 
 
 We reject those two Schools, which, under whatever 
 name they appear, only continue the dualism of the
 
 244 To the Italians 
 
 doctrine which we declare dead. The republican form 
 of government, as we understand it, places the centre of 
 movement in a higher sphere, in which the two much- 
 abused terms, Liberty and Authority, shall not conflict, 
 but harmonise with one another. 
 
 The problem that is agitating the world is not the rejec- 
 tion of authority; for without authority, moral anarchy, and 
 therefore sooner or later material anarchy, are inevitable. 
 It is the rejection of all lifeless authority which is founded 
 on the mere fact of its existence in the past, or on 
 privileges of birth, riches, or aught else, and maintained 
 without the free discussion and assent of the citizens, and 
 closed to all progress in the future. It is not the rejec- 
 tion of liberty, whose absence makes tyranny inevitable. 
 It is the restoration of the idea contained in that word 
 to its true meaning — the poiver to choose, according to our 
 te?idencies, capacity, and circumstances, the means to be 
 employed to reach the end. It is the rejection of that 
 liberty which is an end to itself, and which abandons 
 society and the mission of humanity to the caprice of 
 the impulses and passions of individuals. Authority and 
 Liberty, conceived as we state them, are equally sacred to 
 us, and should be reconciled in every question awaiting 
 settlement. All things in Liberty and for Association; 
 this is the republican formula. Liberty and Association, 
 Conscience and Tradition, Individual and Nation, the 
 "/" and the " IVe " are inseparable elements of human 
 nature, all of them essential to its orderly development. 
 Only in order to co-ordinate them and direct them 
 to a purpose, some point of union is required which 
 is superior to all. Hence practical necessity leads us 
 inevitably back to the high principles that we enun- 
 ciated in theory in an earlier part of our work. 
 
 Sovereignty exists neither in the "/" nor the " IVe" ; 
 it exists in God, the source of Life ; in the Progress 
 that defines life ; in the Moral Law that defines Duty. 
 
 In other terms. Sovereignty is in the Ideal. 
 
 We are all called to do its work. 
 
 The knowledge of the ideal is given to us — so far as 
 it is understood by the age in which we live — by
 
 To the Italians 245 
 
 our intelligence when it is inspired by the love of 
 Good, and proceeds from the Tradition of Humanity 
 to question its own conscience^ and reconciles these two 
 sole criteria of Truth. 
 
 But the knowledge of the ideal needs an ittterprefer 
 who may forthwith indicate the means that may best 
 attain to it, and direct its application to the various 
 branches of activity. And as this interpreter must 
 embrace within itself the "/" and the " IVe" Authority 
 and Liberty, State and Individual ; and as, moreover, 
 it must be progressive, it cannot be a man or any order 
 of men selected by chance, or by the prerogative of a 
 privilege unprogressive by its very nature, or birth, or 
 riches, or aught else. Given the principles contained 
 in the contract of faith and brotherhood, this inter- 
 preter can only be the People, the Nation. 
 
 God and the People : these are the only two terms 
 that survive the analysis of the elements which the 
 Schools have given as the foundation of the social 
 communion. Rome knows by what paths of self- 
 sacrifice, civil virtue, and glory, the banner that bore 
 these two solemn words inscribed upon it, awakened 
 in 1849 the love of Italy for her. 
 
 And here for the present we may stop. The Italian 
 Mission is therefore : — 
 
 The Unity of the Nation, in its material aspect, by 
 the reconquest of the Trentino, of Istria and of Nice ; 
 in its ;/w;-fl/ aspect, by National Education, accompanied 
 by the free and protected Instruction of every heterodox 
 doctrine. 
 
 Unity of defence, or the Nation armed. 
 
 Unity of the Contract and every Institution that 
 represents the civil, political, and economic progress 
 of all Italians. 
 
 Steady activity of the legislative power ; and the ad- 
 ministration of the institutions that concern the national 
 progress, to be entrusted, not to the executive power, 
 but to Commissions by delegation from the legislative. 
 
 Communal liberty to be decreed so far as regards 
 the special progress of the various localities.
 
 246 
 
 To the Italians 
 
 Suppression of all ofifices intended at the present day 
 to represent an undue influence of the Government over 
 the different local districts. 
 
 Division of powers to be a consequence, not of an 
 illogical distribution of sovereignty, but of the different 
 functions of government. 
 
 A smaller number of State employees and a more 
 equal payment for their services. 
 
 Abolition of political oaths. 
 
 Universal Suffrage as the beginning of political 
 education. 
 
 Legislation tending to advance the intellectual 
 and economical progress of those classes that need 
 it most ; and the nation to encourage industrial, 
 agricultural, and labour associations, founded on 
 certain general conditions, and of proven morality 
 and capacity. 
 
 Special attention to be given to the uncultivated 
 lands of Italy, to the vast unhealthy zones, to neglected 
 communal property, and to the creation on them of a 
 new class of small proprietors. 
 
 A general system of taxation so as to free life — that 
 is, the necessaries of life — from all burdens, and so 
 as to fall proportionately on superfluities, and avoid 
 excessive expenses of collection. 
 
 Abolition of all impediments to the free circulation of 
 produce within and without the country. 
 ■ An economic system based on the saving of all useless 
 expenditure and on the progressive increase of production. 
 
 Recognition of every debt contracted by the Nation 
 in the past. 
 
 Simphfication of the transfer of land. 
 
 Abolition of monopolies. 
 
 Responsibility of every public servant. 
 
 International policy to be governed by the moral 
 principle that rules the Nation. 
 
 Alliances to be based on uniformity of tendencies 
 and objects. 
 
 Especial favour to be shown to every movement 
 that may fraternise Italy with the elements of future
 
 To the Italians 247 
 
 or growing Nationalities, with the Greek, Roumanian, 
 or Slav populations, who are destined to solve the 
 problem of Eastern Europe. 
 
 These, with many others, are but the consequences 
 of the great pririciples we have enunciated, and will be 
 developed in our Publication ; and, if the Italians will 
 help us with their effective assistance, a more popular 
 explanation will be given in a paper which we will add, 
 dedicated specially to the Working Classes.
 
 THOUGHTS ON THE 
 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION of 1789
 
 THOUGHTS ON THE 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION of 1789 
 
 m. XL of the " 1^0 ma del Popolo " 
 
 In 1835, when the French republican party was 
 singularly powerful in its secret and public organisation, 
 in men of strong intelligence, of generous daring and 
 a civic courage till then too little known among us ; 
 when an insurrection seemed imminent and success 
 seemed probable, and the eyes of all Europe were turned 
 with anxiety and confidence to France, I wrote in a 
 French Review ^: — 
 
 " The initiative is lost in Europe, and while each of us 
 ought to be working to recover it, we persist in trying to 
 persuade the peoples that it still lives, active and potent. 
 
 "Since 1 814 there has been avoid in Europe, and, 
 instead of labouring to fill it up, we deny the fact. 
 
 " From 1 8 14 onwards, there has been no people to 
 take the initiative, and yet we persist in saying the 
 French people has the power. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 " The French Revolution must be considered, not as a 
 programme, but as a summary : not as the initiative of a 
 new age, but as tlie last formula of an expiring age. 
 
 • •••*" 
 
 " The progress of the peoples depends to-day upon 
 their capacity to emancipate themselves from France. 
 
 " The progress of France depends upon its power to 
 emancipate itself from the eighteenth century and the 
 old Revolution." 
 
 ' "On the Revolutionary Initiative," in \}[i& Revue Rc'publicamc^ 
 
 251
 
 252 Thoughts on the 
 
 The present article is a commentary on those words. 
 
 I write it because I see even to this day, more vivid 
 and potent than I had believed, the inordinate prestige 
 possessed by France and the memories of its great 
 Revolution over the minds of our young men ; a prestige 
 that delayed our reawakening for long years, and still 
 delays its completion or threatens to pervert its direction. 
 The events of the past thirty-six years have confirmed 
 in unmistakable language the truth of that statement. 
 France still, as always, is self-deluded, believes herself to 
 be the leader of European progress, and has from that 
 time forth, almost of necessity, been moving in a circle, 
 from monarchy to republicanism, from republicanism to 
 •despotism, and now she seems to be beginning the same 
 revolution once again. Equally incapable of repose or 
 normal motion ; never able, whether under monarchy 
 or republic, at home or abroad, to take one of those 
 upward steps that open out a new horizon to Nations 
 already organised, or point an easier way for peoples 
 wandering in search of a life as yet denied them. 
 Nevertheless, the idea of France, mistress of the destinies 
 of Europe and hastening to unfold them for the good 
 of all, ploughs to-day like lightning through the soul of 
 the young Italian generation, even as, when I faced the 
 first battles and sorrows of life, it dominated the soul of 
 the generation that is now dead or in lethargic old age. 
 In each convulsive movement of France's great fall our 
 people dream that the initiative is reborn. Any thought 
 that takes shape for few days in Paris, even when it 
 proves the dissolution of the old power which was based 
 upon unity and the prevailing anarchy, finds among 
 us thoughtless and indiscriminating applause. And at 
 every fresh disillusioning, Italian lips utter, or Italian 
 faces show, the cowardly thought : how should we attempt 
 what France attempted a?id failed to do ? What ! are we 
 condemned to crawl for ever behind 7na?i-ki?tg or people- 
 king} Is Italy doomed to be the satellite of a greater 
 planet ? Cannot its population of twenty-five millions 
 do for the new Age what twenty-five millions of French 
 did for the Age that is passing away ?
 
 French Revolution of 1789 253 
 
 Italy does not lack force, but the consciousness of the 
 force that she has within herself; she lacks collective 
 virtue ; the trust of each city in its neighbour city, of each 
 individual in his brother ; the trust of all in the latent 
 life that throbs in the tradition of a people that once 
 was great and is fated to be great again, the life that 
 makes a nation. And among the many causes of this 
 mistrust — Catholicism, materialism, our long servitude, 
 the contradiction between the end of our movement 
 and the means adopted to reach it — not the least 
 is the false conception universally prevalent of the 
 characteristics and historic value of the Revolution in 
 France. Just as a new faith is only revealed when the 
 majority agree in boldly declaring the exhaustion and 
 extinction of the old one, just as a people surrounded 
 by enemies only finds salvation in its own strength when 
 it despairs of others' help, so a Nation can only move 
 resolutely onward along the road that leads to prosperity 
 and greatness when it is convinced that others will not 
 advance for it. The initiative force which it fancies is 
 elsewhere, and which perhaps is hidden in its own breast, 
 cannot reveal itself, for no one thinks of evoking it. 
 
 And another evil consequence results from the belief 
 that the French Revolution has ushered in a new ace, 
 — the blind tendency to imitate its actions, copy its 
 formulas, expend all our active strength in following 
 out the consequences or its ruling ideas, without ad- 
 vancing to the discovery or the confirmation of new 
 ones. The three terms liberty, equality, fraternity, mark 
 out the circle within which all our social philosophy 
 revolves ; it forgets that association is the mother-idea 
 of our Age, an idea unknown to the official inspirations 
 of the Revolution. A bad and immoral definition of 
 life, the search after happiness, filched from the catechism 
 of Volney and the French republican constitutions, 
 rules with slight disguise the whole of our moral 
 philosophy, and cannot help instilling the poison of 
 Egotism into the veins of a society that nevertheless 
 is said to believe in the Law of Common Progress. A 
 baseless speculation, without possible sanction, except
 
 .254 Thoughts on the 
 
 in the brute force of individual rights, which was 
 ■the one formula of every Assembly that controlled the 
 Revolution, summarises the whole of our political 
 science. We mutter the sacred words, Duty and Self- 
 sacrifice, but leave their interpretation to the caprice 
 of good instincts, and thus inadvertently admit all the 
 aristocracies of rights, won just for themselves by one 
 or another class. The theory that popular sovereignty 
 should be exercised, not as the interpretation of a 
 supreme moral Law which has been indicated by a 
 declaration of principles, and diffused by a uniform 
 National Education, but as the brutal despotism of 
 figures, which one day leads to republican liberty, and 
 on the morrow to the unlimited power of a usurper 
 and tyrant, — the doctrine of the impossible divorce of 
 Church and State, both, to-day, phantasms and lies, 
 but which nevertheless are destined sooner or later to 
 represent the harmony between principle and their 
 application, — the debased conceptions of authority, with 
 which Democracy wages war solely because the authority 
 of to-day is a lifeless corpse, though in the ultimate 
 analysis authority is the end and aim of all our efforts, — 
 the insane admiration for a period of terrorism which 
 some have taken for energy, but which was only fear 
 and which prepared France for the Empire, and even 
 now makes a number of unthinking enemies of Re- 
 publican Institutions, — these and other fatal errors all 
 derive from that initial error that makes us forget our 
 own tradition and its message, and fetters us to the 
 tradition that the French Revolution was the beginning of 
 the present age, whilst we are all, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, apostles and heralds of an Age that is about 
 to dawn. In the meantime, the few bad men who are 
 opposed to us, and the many credulous men who accept 
 their charges without examination, take advantage of 
 that error to prophesy from the Republic, as we under- 
 stand it, the same consequences as the deeds that stain, 
 only too deeply, the glories of the French Revolution. 
 
 The statement that I shall attempt to prove in my 
 article would, if true, ultimately change in part the
 
 French Revolution of 1789 255 
 
 direction of the most important science called the 
 philosophy of History, which we define as the per- 
 ceptio7i of the great Tradition of Humanity. To-day, 
 thanks to the avowed materialists who do not under- 
 stand it, and the materialists disguised as Hegelians 
 who misunderstand it, that perception risks being lost. 
 And National tradition, which is so large a part of 
 that of Humanity, is forgotten. The writers and 
 ministers of the monarchical party have converted it 
 into a miserable machiavelism that dates precisely from 
 the time when the princely vassals of Charles V. and 
 Clement VH. interrupted that tradition. Perhaps, im- 
 perfect and weak as my work must inevitably be, it 
 may arouse some few to revive it among the young 
 who have warm hearts and austere genius. In any 
 case it will not be out of place if, in the absolute 
 lack of historical works on the French Revolution 
 among us, at least one Italian should recall us to the 
 need of considering that great event without either 
 blind servility or culpable antagonism, and starting from 
 a standpoint different from that taken by the French and 
 other earlier writers. 
 
 No. XII. of the " Roma del Popolo " 
 
 In a book nobly conceived and boldly written, my 
 friend Edgar Quinet asks himself in tones of grief ^ why 
 the political results secured by the Revolution are so 
 much inferior to the force, the gigantic energy, expended 
 in its course. How is it that even now we are obliged to 
 fight for the rights that it proclaimed more than eighty 
 years ago ; obliged to fight for that Liberty for whose 
 sake nearly two millions of men sacrificed their lives } 
 And he answers that it is because, instead of looking the 
 religious problem in the face, which is the basis of every 
 Society in process of formation, instead of resolutely 
 parting from Catholicism and attacking it as Christianity 
 
 ,' La Revolution, Vol. II. Book V. c. v. 1863.
 
 256 Thoughts on the 
 
 attacked Paganism, the Revolution hesitated, uncertain, 
 vacillating, before the problem, and timidly, hypocritic- 
 ally, condescended to a compromise with Catholicism. 
 All the other causes to which he refers in the course 
 of his work are, in his view, secondary and inferior. 
 
 But why did that cause exist ? Why, in a generation 
 who were very giants in strength of will, did their daring 
 fail them here ? A Revolution is never complete, says 
 the writer, except on condition of embracing and following 
 a new belief, or the rejection and open severance from an 
 old one.^ Why did the Revolution effect neither the one 
 nor the other ? 
 
 Quinet does not try to solve this question so indis- 
 pensable to the right understanding of the mission, the 
 value, the historical significance of the Revolution. He 
 too, like all French writers, was tempted away by the 
 idea that the initiative belongs to France. He, in the 
 sphere of thought, succumbed to the timidity and 
 uncertainty for which he reproved the Revolutionists in 
 the sphere of action. He wanders in the dim domain of 
 an irrational, illogical despair. He sets to the fault of 
 individuals what belongs to the necessity of things, to 
 the laws that govern events ; at times he misunderstands 
 the role of the revolutionary leaders, at times he con- 
 tradicts himself^; he leaves the reader at the end of 
 a long, and in many aspects, splendid work, in the same 
 darkness that he undertook to dispel, still doubtful of the 
 road to be followed in the future. 
 
 The answer to that last question is this : — 
 
 The Revolution was unable, in spite of all its daring, 
 to accomplish the impossible. The Revolution was 
 directly descended from Christianity. The inspiration 
 that ruled its actions never passed beyond the limits of 
 Christian principles. Its work was to apply to mundane 
 
 ' Book V. c. i. 
 
 " "The idea that predominates to-day, and it is the true one — the separa- 
 tion of Church and State — was very lar from the minds of men in 1789" 
 (Book V. c. i.) ; and further on : " It was reserved for our times to fancy 
 that the human soul has nothing to do with political action, that the same 
 man might be forced in one direction in religion, in another in politics, and 
 that so radical a destruction of the human conscience might be effected 
 without injury" (Book V. c. vii.).
 
 French Revolution of 1789 257 
 
 affairs, to political life, the fundamental ideas that 
 Christianity had pointed to the world as belonging to the 
 spiritual order of things, to be only verified by man in 
 heaven. 
 
 Christianity is the Religion of the individual. The 
 collective and progressive life of Humanity, and of its 
 component nations, is unknown to its dogmas or its 
 moral doctrines. Christianity consecrated the two 
 aspects, internal and external, of individuality ; it knew 
 nothing of association, which we know now to be the only 
 method of Progress. It regarded men as brothers, because 
 they were the sons of one God ; but the ideal was a 
 persona], and not a collective one ; and each individual 
 had indicated to him the way to attain the ideal, without 
 learning that it was needful for this very end to unite 
 the capabilities and powers of all. To save oneself, 
 not through the world, or by working with the world, bur 
 in spite of the world — that was the supreme formula of 
 Christianity. 
 
 The Revolution, being a result of the Christian teaching, 
 could neither rebel against it nor free itself from it. The 
 Revolution tried to introduce into political matters the 
 liberty, equality, fraternity of men. Its theory of rights 
 gave the political formula of the individual ; it did not 
 go beyond that. It did not found a ne7u Society ; it 
 prepared the old one for liberty and equality. Liberty- — 
 even when it is given to all, and called Equality — cannot 
 found a new Society ; Association alone can do that. 
 Liberty is no more than an element of social life. It 
 provides the materials : it does not breathe into them the 
 breath of life. 
 
 The Revolution, being the daughter of Christianity, 
 did not cross its boundary, did not pass beyond its 
 primitive inspiration. It might, if the Latin nations 
 had not ingrained opposite tendencies, have adopted 
 the protestant doctrine, and freed itself from Catholicism ; 
 but it could never escape from Christian forms. ^ 
 
 ' In Quinet's book the question never goes beyond the terras of the 
 acceptation or rejection of Catholicism, which is only one of the forms of 
 Cnristianity ; and it might be said that for the new age he only sees the 
 necessity of a Christian transformation. Book XIII. c. vi. 
 
 K
 
 258 Thoughts on the 
 
 The Revolution, therefore — save for those presentiments 
 of the future that permeate every great Revolution — was 
 not the begi}ini?ig but the compendium, the conclusion of 
 an age — a practical summary of the conquests of the past, 
 not a programme of future conquests. 
 
 All the actions, the vacillation, the apparent contradic- 
 tions, the conquests, the vagaries of the Revolution, and 
 its descent to the Empire, find an easy explanation from 
 this point of view. And if I am, as I believe, right, the 
 Christian Age is concluded ; France's mission to initiate 
 is completed. We have another conception of Life, and 
 travel in search of a new earth and a new heaven. And 
 the first People who shall arise in the name of that 
 conception, with the faith that says, / can, and the 
 energy that says, / ivill, and cry to the other peoples, " I 
 am fighting for you all, follow me," this People will give 
 its name to an Age 
 
 II 
 
 Among the French historians of the Revolution, — 
 putting aside the first simple narrators who were more or 
 less judicious in the choice of facts, more or less able 
 to recall them, and at whose head are Thiers and 
 Mignet, — putting aside among the more recent, Louis 
 Blanc, who excels in many merits of clear and elegant 
 style, in his thorough study of documents, and intel- 
 lectual grip of several social questions, but who is warped 
 by his blind partisanship for the men of the mountain, 
 -and destitute of the philosophico-religious sense, ^ — 
 
 ' Louis Blanc in his work starts from a distinction between three great 
 principles, that, separately, he says, dominate the world and Jiistory — 
 namely, authority, individi<alis>n, and /rate r>nty ; and this is one of those 
 arrogant, rash formulas that get repeated without examination, fascinate 
 our young men, and falsify the sober, stern character of the Italian genius. 
 In the meantime, to prove how much he misconceives the philosophic 
 value of those three words, he begins by defining authority as the 
 principle that entrusts the life 0/ nations to' blindly accepted beliefs, to a 
 superstitious respect for tradition, to inequality, and that employs force as 
 a means of Government. Such authority is, I will not call it Christian, but 
 Catholic. Authority is a general and ruling principle, freely accepted as 
 the basis of a society. Sacred as Liberty is sacred, it represents 
 Tradition— that is to say, the sum-total of acquired truths — just as 
 Liberty is the security for further progress along the paths of other 
 truths, truths that shall constitute a basis for a new Authority. The fact 
 
 I
 
 French Revolution of 1789 259 
 
 Buchez stood alone in seeing in the French Revolution 
 1 product of Christianity. He was the founder of a 
 School that had glimpses of many great truths, but lost 
 their fruits by mixing them with serious errors. He 
 understood that the essence of the Revolution was 
 Christian; but believing as he did in the eternity of 
 Christianity, and not divining its slow death-agony, 
 believing too that the initiative had been given to France 
 for all time, he saw^ in the Revolution the beginning of a 
 new Era, in which a transformed Christianity would be 
 converted into a social religion, and would make a 
 reality of the Kingdom of God on earth. But this is to 
 will the impossible. A religion is never transformed ; it 
 exhausts the possibilities of life contained in the principle 
 that created it, and then it dies, leaving that principle 
 among the number of acquired truths. A given end is 
 never reached by an instrument designed for another 
 purpose. A faith that has for its end the salvation of 
 the individual; for its means, the belief in a mediator 
 between God and the individual ; for its condition, 
 Grace ; for dogma, the fall and redemption through 
 another's works — such a faith can never found a Society 
 which, though it works for the same end, has for means 
 the belief in the collective life of Humanity, the sole 
 mediator between God and the individual ; for its condi- 
 tion, the works that we have done on the earth ; for its 
 doctrine, Progress. An attempt like that of the French 
 Revolution, and guided by a gigantic energy of purpose, 
 was made six centuries before. What Gregory VH. 
 attempted, however superficially others may judge him, 
 was to destroy the dualism between two powers, and the 
 organisation of a world living a collective life, with the 
 instrument supplied by Christianity ; not finding in 
 Christianity sufficient virtue to reach his end, he was led 
 
 is, the world is always moving in search of Authority, and has neither 
 lU'e nor progress save in and by it. Only, all Authority, representing, 
 as it does, a definite and limited sum of Truth, is exhausted and perishes 
 when it has fulfilled its mission ; and to him who persists in upholding 
 it in its decay. Revolutions reply that they intend to bury it and win a 
 new one. 
 
 Louis Blanc may say— I cannot— on what foundation the Fraternity which 
 he desiderates can rest, when all authority is destroyed aud individualism 
 condemned.
 
 26o Thoughts on the 
 
 to tr}', like the Revolution, and with similar futility, a policy 
 of violence and terrorism, imposing celibacy by decree, 
 and inflicting death upon souls by excommunication. 
 
 Other writers — the latest and most important being 
 Michelet, the author, I will not say of the best book on 
 the Revolution in its historical aspect, but the book most 
 imbued with a moral standard of judgment that I know 
 of — struck by certain incidents of rebellion common to 
 all Revolutions, and neglecting for excrescences and 
 foreshadowings inseparable from all great national move- 
 ments that which constitutes their essence and defini- 
 tion, saw in the French Revolution a great rejection of 
 Christianity, and hence the begitining of a new Era. 
 Christianity, in the opmion of those writers, is the reign 
 of p-ace ; the Revolution the reign of justice and the 
 abolition of privilege. And they appeal, moreover, to 
 Voltaire and Rousseau, to the inspirers of the Revolution, 
 who were all, as they say, anti-Christian. 
 
 I will touch presently on the course of ideas and 
 tendencies followed by Voltaire and Rousseau ; and how 
 far the Revolution waged war without truce against 
 privilege, and inaugurated the reign of justice, will, I 
 hope, appear from the whole of this work. But I think 
 I must here make two observations to facilitate the 
 development of the question. 
 
 The first is, that to estimate clearly the historical value 
 of a Revolution, we must distinguish between the 
 opinions of individuals and the facts of the Revolution 
 itself. Men, during Revolutions, almost always surrender 
 themselves to the impulses that dominate the multitudes, 
 and compromise with their own. It matters little that 
 Mirabeau, and perhaps many others in the Assembly, 
 took their inspiration from the irreligious scepticism of 
 Voltaire ; for when, with the view of overcoming the 
 opposition of the clergy to the confiscation of ecclesiastical 
 property, and proving that the existing religion ran no 
 risk, the Carthusian Gerle proposed in April 1790 that 
 the Assembly should declare the Catholic, Apostolic, 
 Roman religion the religion of the State, and its worship 
 alone authorised, and when the whole of the Right of
 
 French Revolution of 1789 261 
 
 the Assembly applauded his motion, Mirabeau, pretend- 
 ing to be astonished by the doubt which it implied, 
 asked, " whether it were necessary to decree that the sun 
 shone," and another deputy, with equally sceptical 
 opinions, quoted " the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against " Catholicism, wondering that those words should 
 be confirmed by a poor human decree. It matters little 
 that Robespierre derived all his views from Rousseau's 
 writings; for when, in November 1792, Cambon pro- 
 posed that the State should cease paying the salaries of 
 the clergy, Robespierre declared that every attack upon the 
 Catholic religion was a rrlenace to popular morality, and 
 contested the right of the Revolution to take an initiative 
 by stating that "it mattered httle whether the religious 
 opinions followed by the people were prejudices or not, 
 it was necessary, in any case, to base their reasonings 
 upon them." The character of the Revolution must, in 
 the series of the stages of Progress, be measured by what 
 it did, not by what the revolutionists thought. 
 
 The second point, which is almost always overlooked, 
 is, that human effort along any stage of Progress is 
 achieved first in the intellectual, aftenvards in the 
 practical sphere. 
 
 A religion begins to die in the menial sphere — that 
 is, in its dogma and ritual — when the practical applica- 
 tion of its informing principle is in the first stage ot 
 its development in the field of civil and political facts. 
 Like all great ideas, each religious synthesis begins by 
 being elaborated in the intelligence, in the sphere of 
 spiritual activity. The consequences are not realised 
 in the sphere of material activity until the intelligence 
 has completely assimilated that principle and is master 
 of it. But the continuity of Progress requires, that 
 even before the work that centres round the vital idea 
 of the religious system of the Age is fully completed, 
 the mind should see yet another religion dawning on 
 the far horizon, and begin a new task of development, 
 either around or parallel to it. In the meantime, as 
 I said, the logical deductions of the old system are 
 translated into facts in actual civil life.
 
 262 Thoughts on the 
 
 If this were not so, Progress could only move by fits 
 and starts. The human intellect would remain stationary 
 during the whole time that the idea is being practically 
 applied ; and practical genius, if the work of application 
 is exhausted, would necessarily be stationary in its turn, 
 until the new idea is fully evolved in the intellect. The 
 periods of human progress, interrupted by these station- 
 ary periods, would, to re-connect themselves, need an 
 impulse, some initiative^ from a higher source. This is 
 the theory of direct immediate revelatiotts, which we 
 reject as false, and contrary to all we can divine of the 
 nature of God. 
 
 The anti-Christian tendencies of some of the precursors 
 of the Revolution do not therefore contradict my asser- 
 tion. These thinkers, placed on the confines of two 
 worlds, already had glimpses, not of the future religion 
 itself, but of its necessity and the insufficiency of the 
 old one ; while, on the field of civil and political 
 facts, the Revolution summarised and concluded the 
 Christian Age. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Christianity, setting aside its conception of heaven 
 and its slow ingrafting of dogma, and considering it in 
 its historical relation with other religions, is, as I have 
 said, the religion of the individual ; and this constitutes 
 its vital essence, its mission. 
 
 In the slow and progressive development of the great 
 formula of the Universe, the supreme word of which is 
 Unity, and which assigns to all of us for a final eftd the 
 conquest of the moral Unity of Humanity, so that each 
 one of us may one day reflect the conception of the Law 
 given us, — in this development, Historical Tradition 
 (when we regard it, not with the presumptuous ignorance 
 of modern materialists, but with the reverent attention 
 due to the representation of our collective life, the sole 
 standard from which we can deduce and verify the con- 
 ception of the Law that governs it) shows us a series 
 of great ages, all hall-marked and defined by a religion, 
 all intended to concentrate human activity on the evolu-
 
 French Revolution of 1789 263 
 
 tion of one of the essential elements of the world's 
 problem, God, Nature, the Individual, Humanity. Every 
 age reveals, in part at least, a new term of the formula, 
 and points to a new goal for the forces of the intellect. 
 Every religion pours a fresh drop of the universal life 
 into the human soul. 
 
 Of the ancient religions of the East, some had con- 
 ceived of God as solitary, supreme, beyond the reach 
 of human intellect, menacing as Fate ; others, as some- 
 times blessing, sometimes cursing Nature. All of them 
 neglected man ; none suspected the ray of the divine 
 ideal that is in him, the bond that joins him to the 
 Infinite. On one side was an immense, inscrutable force, 
 on the other, an immense, unconscious, passive weak- 
 ness ; and, between the two. Love had not yet traced 
 with its wings a bridge for possible union. The East 
 had expressed God alone ; man lay crushed, a slave, 
 the sport of an inexorable Fate, or of the caprices of 
 the deified forces of Nature. 
 
 The polytheistic religions expressed ?nan, and his 
 spontaneous nature. They rescued him from a pantheism 
 that oppressed him ; they had glimpses of the fact that in 
 the scheme of the universe man had a part ; but they did 
 not succeed in defining this part. Ignorant of the unity of 
 Life, and its double manifestation in man, individual o.nd 
 collective ; conscious only of the former, they focussed the 
 work of the intellect on the individua/, and saw in him 
 only the subjective existence of the ego — that is, liberty. 
 But without conception of the mission of humanity, un- 
 certain as to the end, and therefore as to the means to be 
 pursued, the work was arrested, powerless to attain its 
 purpose, in the face of a universal fact, — inequality ; and 
 they accepted this fact, decreeing by an infallible dogma 
 the two natures in men. Greece and Rome nobly 
 developed the idea of liberty, but for one class of men 
 only. Slaves existed, by the doom of birth or conquest, 
 side by side with the citizens. 
 
 The Christian Age came to complete the work begun 
 by Polytheism, and to contemplate the individual in his 
 other aspect, in his external, objective, relative existence.
 
 264 Thoughts on the 
 
 Its principal work was, therefore, to develop the idea of 
 equality. The Mosaic religion had already established 
 the vital dogma of the divine unity. Christianity appro- 
 priated this dogma, and, advancing a step further, withdrew 
 it from the privilege of the chosen people in order to 
 diffuse it among all peoples. The God of Moses was the 
 God of Israel, of the Nation : the God of Christianity was 
 the God of men, who were necessarily brothers in Him. 
 The slow abolition of slavery was a consequence of the 
 triumph of Christianity, of the evangelisation of the slave 
 by the priests. The immediate completion of emancipa- 
 tion being impossible, except at the risk of grave dangers, 
 so barbarised and so brutalised were the slaves, there arose 
 under the feudal system an intermediate stage of serfdom ; 
 but the Church itself represented in this respect the ideal. 
 As the guardian of that portion of the Moral Law which 
 the times permitted, she abolished in her own ranks the 
 fatality of birth and the hereditary principle, and made 
 7nerit alone the basis of every ecclesiastical. 
 
 Beyond this Christianity neither did, nor could, 
 proceed. The prevalent conception of Life knew no- 
 thing of collective Humanity, of the Law of Progress 
 that governs us, of the Historical Tradition that reveals 
 it and explains its method, of the solidarity that exists 
 between past, present, and future generations, of the 
 unity that binds together earth and heaven, the ideal 
 and the real, the infinite and the finite. With aspirations 
 towards the future more potent than some think, with a 
 worship of the ideal visible in Art, as in all the other 
 Christian manifestations of the first thirteen or fourteen 
 centuries, Christianity, placed between an end so tre- 
 mendous and remote as salvation, or in other yiords, per- 
 fection, and on the other hand the feeble, unequal, isolated, 
 fruitless powers of the ego, active only for a brief period 
 of time, Christianity was driven to two conclusions : 
 first, the impossibility of solving the problem with the 
 conditions of this life as they were then known ; and next, 
 the necessity for the intervention of a superior power 
 independent of all law, in order to overcome the 
 immense disparity between the end and the means.
 
 French Revolution of 1789 265 
 
 Hence the divinity given to Jesus ; grace ; the contempt 
 of earthly things ; the insufficiency of works ; the ardent 
 longing for heaven, which is the source of prayer, of 
 isolation, of renunciation of the visible world, not of 
 association, or the progressive transformation of the 
 elements in which we live, or self-sacrifice to incarnate 
 so much of the ideal as is possible here below ; hence the 
 divorce between the visible and the invisible world, 
 between the life on earth and a kingdom of Justice and 
 Love to be realised only in Heaven. Christianity re- 
 ceived the idea of liberty that Paganism had worked out, 
 added the idea of equality, and preached charity to the 
 brethren ; but it was a liberty purely spiritual ; an equality 
 of souls before God ; a charity to be exercised between 
 individual and individual only, and a part of the 
 renunciation of earthly goods rather than an attempt to 
 suppress the causes of pain and evil. Religion was not 
 life, but a reward promised for a life to be accepted on 
 the earth such as it was. 
 
 I am speaking of Christianity, not of Catholicism, which 
 was at first a form of Christianity, then a deviation from 
 it. Even Protestantism, which was generally supposed 
 to be a Revolution, and which many believed a pro- 
 gressive movement in Christianity, was practically nothing 
 more than a protest in favour of intellectual liberty, that 
 had been systematically violated by the Papacy ; and, in 
 a higher sense, an evidence, little understood by the Re- 
 formers themselves, of the slow extinction of the Christian 
 age. Sixteen centuries had exhausted the vigour of the 
 Christian philosophy. The human spirit was bound to 
 move again towards another and vaster philosophy ; 
 hence the necessity for a strong assertion of the in- 
 dividual, and for that right of private judgment without 
 which every attempt to pass the limits of the old belief 
 would have failed. Protestantism unconsciously asserted 
 it. And that was its sole mission in the world ; it did 
 not pass beyond the boundary of the age. The 
 sovereignty of the individual — arbitrarily confined within 
 the limits of the Bible — was its last word, re-echoed in 
 the Arts the Economics, the Politics that it inaugurated.
 
 266 Thoughts on the 
 
 France took on herself the task to conclude the Age 
 of the individual, which was sterilised and moribund, by 
 two more centuries of dissolution. She summarised its 
 conquests, its principles, its characteristics, and trans- 
 lated them practically into the sphere of civil life. 
 
 Did she cross the boundary ? 
 
 Did she initiate the new Age ? 
 
 IV 
 
 Ideas rule the world and its events. A Revolution is 
 the passage of an idea from theory to practice. Whatever 
 men have said, material interests never have caused, 
 and never will cause, a Revolution. Extreme poverty, 
 financial ruin, oppressive or unequal taxation, may 
 provoke risings that are more or less threatening or 
 violent, but nothing more. Revolutions have their 
 origin in the mind, in the very root of life ; not in the 
 body, in the material organism. A Religion or a 
 philosophy lies at the base of every Revolution. This 
 is a truth that can be proved from the whole historical 
 tradition of Humanity. 
 
 Now, what were the ruling ideas in the period im- 
 mediately preceding the Revolution ? What were the 
 doctrines that hovered over its cradle ? What was it 
 that inspired and baptized its development and the 
 various parties that promoted it ? Did they go beyond 
 the confines of the Age of the individual and his rights'? 
 Did they initiate the Age of Duty ; and of Association, 
 the only means of fulfilling Duty ? 
 
 Three men, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, com- 
 prehended the whole intellectual movement of the 
 eighteenth century, and exercised a visible and predomi- 
 nant influence on the development of the Revolution : 
 Montesquieu, on the ideas of the Constituent Assembly ; 
 Rousseau, on the men of the Convention ; Voltaire, 
 on the beginnings of the movement and certain general 
 tendencies that reappear intermittently to recall his name, 
 and the indefatigable war he waged for fifty years against 
 the traditions of the Church and the caprice of despotism.
 
 French Revolution of 1789 267 
 
 Voltaire's genius was quick, subtle, acute, analytic, 
 encyclopaedic, but not profound; he was moved by 
 good and philanthropic instincts rather than by strong 
 and reasoned moral beliefs ; a warrior rather than an 
 apostle; a hater of evil rather than a worshipper of 
 good ; too much extolled by some, too much depreciated 
 by others, Voltaire founded no doctrine, but, as I 
 have said, popularised tendencies, — tendencies that 
 existed already, and were almost innate in the French 
 genius, but to which he gave new force and clothed 
 in noble language, — tendencies which leak out in a 
 number of the events of the Revolution, and, excepting 
 the more rigid puritans of the Mountain, from Camille 
 Desmoulins to Barres, influence, one might say, every 
 actor of the period. They were philanthropic tendencies, 
 inspired by momentary impulses of kindness rather than 
 by a conception of life, and of its law, — tendencies of a 
 vague, sterile, superficial deism, which relegated God to 
 heaven and sundered His undying connection with the 
 world, and which was merely a compromise between 
 the tradition still extant in the popular mind, and the 
 scepticism that, however coverdy, dominated Voltaire 
 and his followers, — tendencies of antagonism to every 
 imposed authority, to every form of superstition and 
 fanaticism, but born rather of a sense of rebellion natural 
 to one who thinks, than of faith in the destinies of those 
 who have yet to learn to think, — tendencies that wor- 
 shipped the rights of reason, but only for those indi- 
 viduals who by good fortune and education can share 
 in them, and which were mingled with some spirit of 
 contempt for the masses, a spirit which afterwards 
 founded the fatal distinction between the popular 
 and the bourgeois classes, — tendencies of equality, 
 but confined, as in the philosophy of the ancients, to 
 one order of men, regardless of the rest. I have 
 mentioned the bourgeois class, and Voltaire was, in 
 fact, consciously or unconsciously, the teacher and 
 master of the bourgeoisie, and his influence was all- 
 powerful in the acts that, in the period just before 
 the Revolution traced the first lines of a division
 
 268 Thoughts on the 
 
 that has been more recently organised into a system, 
 by Guizot and the French eclectic school : the 
 bourgeoisie of the two Bourbon Revolutions idolised 
 him. A man of impulses, of intuitions, rapid but 
 short-lived, of enthusiasm, intellectual rather than moral, 
 Voltaire, who displayed rare humanity in his efforts to 
 clear the memory of Galas and the Sirven family, 
 was flatterer at once of the Empress Catherine and 
 King Frederic of Prussia. He sanctified their crimes ; 
 he burlesqued, in low comic verse, the heroic resistance 
 of the Poles to the dismemberment of their Fatherland. 
 An apostle of toleration in religious matters, he was 
 the type of intolerance towards all his enemies, and 
 capable of using any weapon, even calumny, to their 
 prejudice. He waged a relentless, rabid war against 
 Catholicism, and when threatened with death wrote a 
 declaration of catholic faith and repentance. I write 
 this as a debt to my own conscience, and because I see 
 arising among our young men, who have neither studied 
 all his works nor his life, an intemperate and dangerous 
 admiration for him ; but it is more important to my 
 present purpose to note how Voltaire destroyed pre- 
 judices and errors, but neither built nor cared for the 
 future. He had no perception (his historical works 
 and his theory that great events depend upon little 
 causes prove this) of a Law dominating the life of 
 Humanity, no perception of Progress, of a human 
 mission, of Duty, of Association, or of anything that 
 constitutes the e7id and the method of the new Era that 
 we invoke. He recognised no standard of good except 
 in the rights of the i?idividual. And like all who start 
 from the idea of right alone, he could not help being 
 forced to give the preference to rights already existing 
 and recognised. He declared that " a State being a 
 collection of lands and houses, those w-ho possessed 
 neither land nor house ought not to have any delibera- 
 tive voice in the management of public affairs." In 
 one of the most beautiful moments of his long life, 
 he gave full expression to the idea that guided him, 
 when he uttered, under guise of a blessing on Franklin's
 
 French Revolution of 1789 269 
 
 young son, the sacred but insufficient words — God and 
 Liberty ; a formula that opens the way to a possible 
 initiative, but does not itself initiate. Liberty is a 
 mere instrument of good or evil according to the path 
 it chooses. 
 
 Montesquieu, a more profound thinker than Voltaire,, 
 though less profound than some say, was the chief 
 of a political school that had for its disciples, in the 
 first period of the Revolution, Monnier, Malouet, and 
 many others in the Assembly ; Rivarol,^ Bergasse, 
 Mallet Dupan,- and others in the periodical press. 
 The influence of the ideas he expounded in the Esprit 
 des Lois is visible in the acts of the Constituent 
 Assembly. 
 
 His influence lay in his historical studies of antiquity, 
 that would be thought superficial at the present day, 
 but then appeared vast and almost unique. His in- 
 tellect was acute, and swift in seizing the salient points- 
 of things ; his aspirations were advanced ; the expression 
 of his thoughts vigorous. Montesquieu was at times 
 unconsciously impelled, by his native logic, near to the 
 unknown confines of the new Age ; but he was hindered 
 by his lack of any religious conception of the life ot 
 Humanity, by the prevailing theory of the ebb and flow 
 of Nations, perhaps, too, by the inevitable influences of 
 a semi-patrician birth and the conditions of office ; and 
 so he retreated ever more and more towards the old 
 Age, and never, even in his most daring flights, crossed 
 the limits of a period that began the transition. For an 
 instant he caught a glimpse of the true definition of 
 liberty, when he said that it consisted " in being able 
 to do what one ought to will, and in not being con- 
 strained to do what one ought not to will " (Book XI. 
 c. iii). But this was a momentary flash, an isolated 
 saying, whose consequences he was unable to deduce. 
 He suspected the existence of a general end, common to 
 humanity, and a special end, belonging to each nation ; 
 but he was incapable of rising from that glimpse of an 
 idea to the conception of a providential mission. He. 
 
 ' Actes des Apotres. ' Mercure Politique.
 
 270 Thoughts on the 
 
 notes " that the object of Rome was aggrandisement ; 
 of Lacedemonia, war ; of the Judaic laws, religion ; of 
 Marseilles, commerce; of the barbarians, natural liberty"; 
 but he never saw that those facts were only means to 
 reach the end, and that the appointed end is general 
 progressive civilisation, the slow formation of a collective 
 human unity. It is clear from twenty passages that 
 he feels in his soul the superiority of the republican 
 form of government to all others ; and yet, finding no 
 body of principles that convert the intuition of the 
 moment into a demonstrated truth, he concludes by 
 labouring to teach how a monarchy may be durably 
 established. He too, in all his researches, starts only 
 from the individual, and so, like all who have no other 
 criterion of Truth, he can only grasp the notion of right. 
 For him, as for the other philosophic thinkers of the 
 time, there are rights consecrated by the fact of their 
 existence, by prolonged possession ; and the political pro- 
 gramme is reduced to efforts to find a place for them in 
 the social organism, and to seek an impossible equili- 
 brium that shall preserve the peace among them, and 
 prevent one right from doing violence to another. Placed 
 between a monarchy that said "France is mine," an 
 aristocracy powerful by past domination and an exclusive 
 influence over the monarchy, and the first threatening 
 murmurings of the Tiers Etat, Montesquieu did not 
 pretend to pass judgment on those three forces, or 
 ascertain the sum of vitality that existed in each, and 
 which was doomed to early death, which destined to 
 long life in the future. They existed, and he accepted 
 them, consecrating the labour of his intellect to co- 
 ordinate their existence and functions in the organisation 
 of the State. His ideal was the English system, the 
 result, not of any conception of political philosophy, 
 but of a unique historical development of causes and 
 effects which existed nowhere else. His theory is that 
 which we have seen in practice for more than half a 
 century under the name of constitutional monarchy, 
 where the search for an equilibrium between the three 
 elements of Crown, and Nobility, and Commons, has
 
 French Revolution of 1789 271 
 
 everywhere condemned the peoples to alternate between 
 stagnation, reaction, and periodic revolution. 
 
 The problem, therefore, in the Esprit des Lois is 
 vitiated by a fundamental error. Montesquieu labours 
 heavily about the distinction between the three Powers, 
 legislative, executive, and judiciary, and makes this the 
 cardinal point of the whole question ; he thus, by ex- 
 aggerating this distinction, destroys the conception of 
 National Unity. The real, the sole, the vital question 
 should be, for him as for us all, the question of 
 Sovereignty ; what is its origin, and where its interpreta- 
 tion is to be sought with the least uncertainty and the 
 greatest probability. 
 
 There does not, and ought not to exist more than 
 one Law ; it is its application to the diverse branches 
 of social life that implies a distinction in the higher 
 branches of the administration between the different 
 functions delegated to provide for its execution. Just 
 as the exaggeration of the triple aspect of life in God 
 changed little by little the three different aspects of divine 
 action into Three Persons, and founded a Tri-theism 
 in religion opposed to the conception of Unity, so the 
 theory of rights, and hence of acquired rights, impelled 
 Montesquieu to discover poivers where they did not 
 exist, and found a political Tri-theism which has sur- 
 vived even to this day, and impairs every conception 
 of national organisation. Having raised these social 
 elements to Powers, he confers on them attributes which 
 suffice to break up the harmony of the State. He was 
 confronted by the danger, either of antagonism between 
 the three powers, or compulsory stagnation ; but he 
 replied with superficial carelessness, " that, as they were 
 urged forward by the necessary movement of things, they 
 would be constrained to move in unison." 
 
 Montesquieu abounds in false ideas respecting the 
 hereditary nature of the aristocracy, the function of 
 the monarchy, the rights conceded to the executive over 
 the legislative, and many other questions. But it is not 
 my task to notice them. It is sufficient for my purpose to 
 have reminded my readers of the thought that dominates
 
 272 Thoughts on the 
 
 his conceptions. He has no criterion outside that 
 of the individual. He reaches no fornaula of poHtical 
 organisation beyond that of rights. He has no scope, 
 no mission to suggest for the State, except liberty, and 
 by liberty he understands, in the general course of his 
 work, nothing more than "the citizen's consciousness of 
 his own safety, and of having nothing to fear from any 
 other citizen." Political science is therefore narrowed 
 to a science of limits, of mutual defence. And the 
 government, deprived of any other mission, is to use 
 the force of society to watch that those limits are not 
 overstepped by violence. A Religious conception, the 
 Law of Progress, Duty, Association, the end assigned to 
 Humanity and to each People, collective Education, 
 and the office of the Press to gradually promote the 
 unity of the human family, everything, in short, that is 
 characteristic of the Age we call for, is unknown to the 
 man who inspired the Constituent Assembly. 
 
 Montesquieu was neither inspirer nor prophet of an 
 Age. 
 
 He summarised, with singular acumen, the conditions 
 and consequences of political laws as he found them, 
 incomplete or in partial activity, in the period in which 
 he lived. He sketched in outline, not always, but 
 frequently exact, the existing tradition, but nothing 
 more. When we point to him, at the present time, as 
 the master of future legislation, we commit the same 
 error as when we make poor Machiavelli the guardian of 
 the cradle of reborn Italy — Machiavelli, who anatomised 
 the dead body of old Italy and showed the wounds that 
 caused her death ; when we take Adam Smith — who 
 was but the wise exponent of the laws that governed the 
 economic phenomena of his time — and make him the 
 founder of an immutable science, the teacher of an Age 
 in which the economic relations between class and class 
 are hastening to an inevitable change. 
 
 Rousseau, the inspirer of the Convention, followed 
 another road, but without passing the confines of the 
 Age that France was preparing to summarise. A poor 
 plebeian, without deep study of the past, abhorring the
 
 French Revolution of 1789 273 
 
 times in the consciousness of liis own superiority, and 
 for the exaggerated demands of Society as he found it, 
 he, on the great poHtical questions of the day, questioned 
 only his own inteUigence and the intuitions of the 
 heart. His inteUigence was more powerful than that of 
 Montesquieu ; his heart was led astray by a leaven of 
 egotism that too often soured his natural inclination to- 
 good; and both together drove him to the principle that 
 takes its birth, if not its consecration, from him — the 
 principle of popular sovereignty. A true principle, if 
 considered as the best method of interpreting a supreme 
 Moral Law which a nation has accepted as its guide, 
 which is solemnly declared in its Contract and transmitted 
 by National Education ; but a false and anarchical principle 
 if proclaimed in the name of force, or in the name of a 
 Convention, and abandoned to the caprice of majorities, 
 uneducated and corrupted by a false conception of life. 
 
 For Rousseau, the popular sovereignty remained in 
 these last terms, uncertain, ineffective, shifting. He, too, 
 had no conception of the collective life of Humanity, of 
 its tradition, of the Law of Progress appointed for the 
 generations, of a common end towards which we ought to 
 strive, of Association that can alone attain it step by step. 
 Starting from the philosophy of the ego and of individual 
 liberty, he robbed that principle of fruit by basing it, 
 not on a Duty common to all, not on a definition of man 
 as an essentially social creature, not on the conception 
 of a divine Authority and a providential design, not on 
 the bond that unites the individual to Humanity of 
 which he is a factor, but on a simple convention, avowed 
 or understood. All Rousseau's teaching proceeds from 
 the assertion "that social right is not derived from 
 nature, but is based upon conventions." ^ He drives this 
 doctrine so far as to comprehend the family itself within 
 it. " Sons," he says, " do not remain united to their 
 fathers except so long as they have need of them for 
 their preservation. . . . From that time forth the family 
 is only maintained in virtue of a convention." 
 
 From the doctrine that recognises the rights of the 
 
 ' Conlrat Social, in the first chapters.
 
 274 Thoughts on the 
 
 contracting individuals as the only source of social life, 
 nothing could result but a political system capable of 
 protecting, within the limits of a narrow possibility, the 
 liberty and equality of each citizen ; and Rousseau has 
 no other programme. "The aim of every system of 
 legislation " — these are his very words — " reduces itself 
 to two principal objects, liberty and equahty " (Book II. 
 ■c. xi.) ; and earlier, in c. iv. of Book I., "to find a form 
 of society that shall defend ^nd. protect with all the collec- 
 tive forces the person and the property of each associate, 
 and in which each one, uniting himself to all, shall obey 
 only himself and remain as free as he was before : this is 
 the fundamental problem." Stated in these terms, the 
 problem contains neither the elements of normal pro- 
 gress nor the possibility of solving the social economic 
 question that is so prominently agitating men's minds 
 in our time. An isolated sentence in the book seems to 
 lay down the principle that " no citizen ought to be rich 
 enough to be in a position to buy another ; none poor 
 enough to be constrained to sell himself"; this is just, 
 but it does not connect itself with the general bearing 
 of the principles he expounds, nor is there any indication 
 how it may be reduced to fact. It is of little importance 
 that in many particulars he is superior to every other 
 thinker of that period. The Society of Rousseau, like 
 that of Montesquieu, is a mutual insurance society, and 
 nothing more. 
 
 That first statement, the key of the whole system, is 
 by now proven to be false ; and, because false, fatal to 
 the development of the principle of popular Sovereignty. 
 It is not by the force of conventions or of aught else, but 
 by a necessity of our nature that Societies are founded 
 and grow. Each of us is a part of Humanity, each of us 
 lives its life, each is called upon to live for it, to aid the 
 attainment of the end assigned to it, to realise, as far as 
 possible in each one of us, the ideal type, the divine 
 thought that guides it. Law is one and the same for 
 individual and collective life, both of which are the ex- 
 pression of a single universal phenomenon, differently 
 anodified by space and time. And life, we know now.
 
 French Revolution of 1789 275 
 
 is Progress. If you throw over Moral Authority, our 
 natural tendencies, our mission, and substitute the merely 
 human authority of conventions as the source of social 
 development, you risk arresting that development, or 
 subjecting it to arbitrary caprice. And since you need 
 the consent of all the contracting parties to dissolve these 
 conventions and make a change for the better, you are 
 threatened, on the one hand by the power of every 
 minority, logically indeed of every individual, to stop 
 you ; on the other hand, inasmuch as the prolonged 
 existence of a fact pre-supposes, at all events, a tacit 
 convention, you are threatened by the necessity of per- 
 petuating rights and powers that are not founded on 
 justice, or conducive to the common good. No " man " 
 has, you say, " natural authority over his fellows : Might 
 cannot create right ; therefore conventions are left as the 
 only basis of legitimate authority." But is there not an 
 authority higher than any man, in the True, the Just, 
 the end which we have set before us and which we are 
 bound above all things to discover ? Is not some of that 
 authority passed on to the people or to that fraction of 
 the people which is its best interpreter? And, to dis- 
 cover that etid, do we not possess the double criterion 
 supplied when the Tradition of Humanity and the 
 conscience of our times both harmonise ? And for a 
 method of practical verification, can we not examine 
 whether this item of discovered truth profits or not the 
 common progress ? Rousseau believed in God, but in 
 his study of human phenomena he continually forgot 
 Him. 
 
 Rousseau believed in God. He believed — and it is 
 well to remind of this those republican materialists who 
 venerate the Contraf Social — that a State could not be 
 established without having religion for its foundation. 
 And he pushed this belief to the fanaticism of intolerance, 
 declaring (Book IV. c. viii.) that the Sovereign power 
 could exile from the state all who disbelieved in God and 
 Immortality, and condemn any citizen to death who, 
 after publicly confessing his belief in those dogmas, by 
 his subsequent conduct convicted himself of deliberate
 
 276 Thoughts on the 
 
 falsehood. But he confined himself within a narrow 
 deism that placed God far off in heaven, and never under- 
 stood his universal, never-dying life manifested in Crea- 
 tion ; he was ignorant of the Law of Progress — the sole 
 but potent and living mediator between God and 
 Humanity; he was fettered by the individualist philo- 
 sophy; he had no glimpse of any religion besides 
 Christianity; and so he was incapable of deducing and 
 applying the logical consequences of his faith to Society. 
 Like Voltaire and Montesquieu, Rousseau was not the 
 intellectual herald of an Age. His conception, though 
 more daring, more explicit, more advanced than theirs, 
 never passes the limits of the individualist world, 
 elaborated by the Pagan-Christian Age. The influence of 
 the three schools with which these names are associated 
 could not push the Revolution beyond those limits, to 
 the World of Progress and Association for which we are 
 now fighting. 
 
 V. 
 
 Did France collectively effect what these three great 
 and influential thinkers failed to effect? Did she, by 
 virtue of enthusiasm, cross the boundaries of that world 
 within which their doctrines were confined ? Often, like 
 intuition in the individual, Insurrection (which is the 
 intuition of a people, the concentration of all the faculties 
 harmoniously directed to a given point), advances further 
 than the slow, peaceful, solitary labour of the intellect. 
 The electric spark, set free when the masses are kindled 
 by a common aspiration and suddenly rise to self-sacrifice 
 and victory, flashes more strongly through the darkness, 
 and illumines a horizon more distant than what the pale, 
 steady light of the sage's lamp reveals. Let us see if this 
 was so. 
 
 The best method of gauging the value of a Revolution 
 is to thoroughly scrutinise the series of solemn declara- 
 tions made in its name by the collective authorities, 
 freely chosen by the people to represent the movement, 
 or by the extra-legal movements of the people itself, when 
 they announce a determined end, and leave a mark that
 
 French Revolution of 1789 277 
 
 points in the direction of the future. Every revolution 
 has, by the very nature of things, isolated geniuses out- 
 side its own orbit. They are the aerolites of the moral 
 world, and give indications of important eccentric 
 phenomena, but teach us nothing as to the path of the 
 planet. To select, as some do, from a speech of Claude 
 Fauchet or St. Just, a chance unconscious phrase, in 
 contradiction with the whole, and argue from it the spirit 
 of the Revolution, is to falsify the historic significance 
 of great events ; it is to mistake the aerolite for the 
 planet. 
 
 The first solemn declaration of the spirit of the Revolu- 
 tion is seen in the Instructions given by the electoral 
 colleges to the deputies that represented the three orders, 
 Clergy, Nobles, and Third Estate, in the States-General. 
 The members elected numbered 1200; 600 for the 
 Third Estate, 300 for each of the privileged orders. The 
 electors, who voted indirectly, in two removes, for the 
 Third Estate and the lower Clergy, and directly for 
 the remaining members, reached the total of six 
 millions.^ 
 
 Since the time of Louis XIV. France had been suffer- 
 ing a material and moral decadence. Morally, the 
 insolent, brazen corruption of the Court under the 
 Regency of Philip of Orleans and Louis XV. had in- 
 fected the nobility and the higher bourgeoisie. The 
 luxury, the decay in morals, the arbitrary rule of the 
 Government and men of position was unbounded ; one 
 would be tempted to say that the details given us were 
 lies invented by historians, were they not confirmed by 
 contemporary documents. It is not my purpose to re- 
 peat them here ; but the squandering of money, which, 
 from the time of Louis XIV. to the Regency, had run 
 up the debt of France to three milliards, explains how 
 a hundred servants were often collected in a single 
 palace, how 150,000 francs were spent annually in dinners 
 alone by a financier, Samuel Bernard, just as the seraglio 
 
 ' France— I could wish that the Italians, to-day bowed down before her 
 because she was able to fi^ht and vanquish Europe, should remember this 
 —numbered then twenty-five millions of inhabitants.
 
 278 Thoughts on the 
 
 of young girls, bought or kidnapped for the king,^ since 
 the days of Pompadour, explains the private life of the 
 nobles, of whom fifteen out of twenty did not live with 
 their wives ; and as the fifty State prisons, nearly all 
 governed by Jesuits, into which the inmates entered 
 for an indefinite time, without trial, and in virtue of 
 a royal or ministerial order that the minister often gave 
 away in blank or sold, explains the custom of fathers to 
 imprison at times sons to be rid of the annoyance of 
 a projected marriage, or of wives who thus escaped the 
 over-watchful eyes of unloved husbands. Just as a lesion 
 of the brain afflicts the whole organism with disease, 
 so a corrupt monarchy, slowly but inevitably, corrupts 
 the whole country. In the meantime, in contrast with 
 this life in high places, poverty and misery had increased 
 among the people, and most markedly among the culti- 
 vators of the soil, to a degree that would appear in- 
 credible, if we had not at hand the testimonies of men 
 of all classes, men who were more than moderate in 
 their views, from Bossuet to Fenelon, from Vauban to 
 Bois-Guillebert, from the reports of the Intendants of the 
 Provinces to those of the Minister Argenson. Specu- 
 lators, seconded by the Government and the more 
 covetious courtiers, traded on this misery, and had 
 organised what was termed by contemporaries the Pact 
 of Htuiger. By a series of market operations the whole 
 corn of the country was exported, and when the 
 premium paid on exportations had been received, the 
 whole stock was accumulated in Jersey or Guernsey 
 and other depots, and sold again, when the needs of 
 the people had reached their greatest extremity, at very 
 high prices, as though it had arrived from America. 
 
 From such conditions, with these causes for indigna- 
 tion long repressed, there arose unexpectedly, suddenly, 
 by the convocation of the States-General, which the 
 urgent need of money had wrested from the king, a 
 people of six millions, that gave voice to its wants in 
 the Instructions. The frenzied, tortured soul of France 
 and the character of the movement then beginning, 
 
 ' Pare aux Cer/s.
 
 French Revolution of 1789 279 
 
 were bound to be plainly revealed in them. And the 
 Instructions — the Cahiers as they were termed in France 
 — did reveal them. The Revolution, irritated by the 
 many-sided opposition, developed a prodigious energy 
 in the means it adopted to obtain satisfaction for the 
 popular demands, but in substance, hardly, if at all, 
 advanced beyond them. 
 
 The Instructions express an immense aspiration for 
 liberty and civil equality. The individual, violated, 
 repressed, downtrodden for centuries, panted for life, and 
 asserted itself in the popular Programme given to the 
 Revolution. But that Programme does not contradict 
 the fundamental proposition of my article. It is not the 
 programme of the new Age, that we who love, tight, and 
 hope foresee to-day. It is not based on a new definition 
 of Life. It does not initiate ; it reasons out, and 
 summarises previous acquisitions of the intellect, which 
 had been left sterile and inoperative in the sphere of 
 facts. It does not escape from the circle of Christian 
 inspirations ; it only demands, like the Hussites, the cup 
 for all that the rewards promised in heaven shall be 
 realised upon the earth, that the dogma of the salvation 
 of the individual by means of individual vioxk.?, shall have 
 an application in this world. 
 
 The Instructions of the Nobility are naturally inferior 
 to the others. A breath of equality is, however, felt at 
 times in their pages. They demand an equal distribution 
 of taxes, the abolition of exceptional tribunals, uniformity 
 of penalties for all, the abolition of ferocious punish- 
 ments, the publicity of criminal trials. Some few among 
 the localities suggest that all men of worth should be 
 admitted to public offices. Three, Peronne, Montdidier 
 and Roye, suggest that judges should be nominated by 
 the king from lists drawn up by the people. But the 
 old spirit shortly afterwards turns up, dominant, in the 
 demand for the maintenance of seigneurial justice, of the 
 exclusive right of hunting in feudal lands, of the exclusion 
 of the non-noble from the higher military ranks, etc., and 
 by these exceptions cancels their scanty instincts for good. 
 
 The Instructions of the Clergy, of the lower Clergy
 
 28o Thoughts on the 
 
 especially, are better ; more frequently, so powerful is 
 the influence even of worn-out and corrupt religion, 
 inspired by a love of the people and a sense of more 
 advanced equality. In many localities they demand a 
 system of National Education, not to be left to local 
 caprice, but based on uniform principles approved by 
 the States-General, and also free schools for both sexes 
 in every commune. In some they demand the erection 
 of hospitals in the richer communes, and, what is of more 
 importance, the exemption from taxation of men who 
 live by their daily toil ; in others, measures in favour 
 of public morality, a most righteous suppression of pub- 
 lications tending to corrupt it, and the repression of 
 prostitution ; in others again, the emancipation of the 
 negroes. Politically they demand the permanency of 
 the States-General, or their convocation at least every 
 five years, ministerial responsibility, the abolition of all 
 exceptional tribunals, the foundation of Boards of 
 Arbitration, the inviolability of the secrecy of the Post, 
 municipal freedom, and the election of communal magis- 
 trates by the people, the codification of the law, publicity 
 of justice, the mitigation and equalisation of punishments, 
 the abolition of judicial torture, of confiscation and 
 banishment ; next — from a spirit of antagonism to the 
 nobility, which the latter reciprocated- — the abolition of 
 feudal rights, of caste privileges, and every monopoly of 
 public offices. In religious matters the clergy confessed 
 the decay of discipline and the need of reform ; and 
 some of them indicate as a remedy the convocation 
 of a National Council and Provincial Synods ; others, 
 that plurality of benefices should be abolished, that the 
 clergy should be compelled to reside in their cures, that 
 all titles to office should be derived from merit and virtue ; 
 some few recall the old popular elections and prefer the 
 restriction of episcopal authority. None the less, the 
 exclusive Catholic conception betrays itself and entirely 
 dominates the Instructions, destroying at once the good 
 results of the measures they ask for. The clergy demand 
 that education shall be entrusted solely to the religious 
 orders, that the University shall not receive professors
 
 French Revolution of 1789 281 
 
 unless proved to be adherents of the CathoHc faith, that 
 the censorship shall be maintained for all publications, 
 that an ecclesiastical committee shall have the power 
 to condemn any books opposed to the teaching of the 
 Church, and that the Government shall then proceed to 
 suppress them, that Catholicism shall be recognised 
 as the sole and dominant religion, that certain provisions 
 be made to the prejudice of non-Catholics, that the con- 
 cessions of civil rights and marriage given to the 
 Protestants by the edict of 1787 be revoked. 
 
 But the two privileged orders could not express the 
 feeling of the Nation : the Third Estate alone could 
 do that. And, taken generally, the Instructions of the 
 Third Estate affirm the sovereignty of the Nation, the 
 necessity of a Declaration of Rights, of the convocation 
 of the States-General independently of the will of any 
 individual, the inviolability of the Deputies, and the 
 responsibility of Ministers ; next, freedom of conscience, 
 freedom of the Press, freedom of internal trade, indi- 
 vidual liberty, suppression of State prisons and of 
 exceptional jurisdictions. Jurors are to be the judges 
 of fact, indemnity is to be made to any prisoner 
 declared to be innocent, the law is to be codified, 
 property is to be equally divided among children, 
 entail to be abolished. Such are the demands of the 
 several localities. Others claim an equal distribution of 
 taxation, assessment by the provincial Estates, journey- 
 men being exempt ; others, the uniformity of weights 
 and measures, the establishment of discount banks 
 wherever the commercial conditions are favourable 
 boards of arbitration, free justice, a commercial code \ 
 others, the organisation of a public health department, 
 hospitals, foundling asylums, the direction of education 
 to the double purpose of developing in the pupils 
 a strong physical constitution and a knowledge of the 
 principles necessary to man and the French citizen ; 
 some few demand that ecclesiastical offices be filled 
 by popular election, that the religious orders shall be 
 totally or partially suppressed, that tithes shall be re- 
 duced, lotteries and gaming establishments abolished;
 
 282 Thoughts on the 
 
 they ask for the erection of country hospitals, offices 
 for charitable relief, work for the able-bodied, aid to the 
 sick, loans on easy terms to workmen and to cultivators 
 of the soil. 
 
 On this magnificent programme, of which I only 
 give a rapid sketch, was superimposed, in the Instruc- 
 tions of the three orders, the twofold dogma of the 
 Christian world — Catholicism and Monarchy. The 
 former was declared the religion of the State, — the 
 latter asserted to be inseparable from the life of the 
 Nation, hereditary and inviolable. 
 
 But not one of the reforms they indicated advances 
 beyond what I call the doctrine of the individual and 
 of the Age from which we are trying to escape to-day. 
 The conception of Life from which all those Instruc- 
 tions emanated was identical with that which I have 
 already shown as inspiring the Encyclopaedists, and 
 Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The end of human exist- 
 ence is for all of them material well-being, the means 
 to reach it, liberty. They desire the inviolability of 
 conscience, of the expression of thought, of action, of 
 private correspondence, because " the natural liberty 
 of each man, his personal security, his absolute inde- 
 pendence from all authority except that of the written 
 law, require it." Liberty in the Instructions given by 
 Nemours and other localities is stated to be " the right 
 of each man to do without hindrance whatever does 
 not injure his fellow-men." " Men," say the Instruc- 
 tions of Nivernais and Rennes, " have only renounced 
 the use of private force that they may be more effec- 
 tively protected by public force, and this is the only 
 source of the reciprocal obligations of citizens ; of citizens 
 towards Society, of Society towards them," From Paris, 
 Marseilles, Nemours, Merindol, Aurons, St. Vaast, Rosny, 
 St. Sulpice, Villers-Cotterets, from twenty other places 
 there appears with one voice the ruling principle of 
 the Instructions, that " natural rights " shall constitute the 
 " basis of the Government of France," that the " preserv- 
 ation of rights " is the " sole object " of political societies. 
 
 This idea is so universal that it induces them to reject
 
 French Revolution of 1789 283 
 
 conscription in the organisation of the army, and to 
 substitute voluntary enhstment, thus destroying, from 
 reverence for the rights of the individual, one of the 
 most sacred duties of a citizen, the duty of defending 
 the Fatherland by arms ; and it impels them to propose 
 the abolition of the oath to defendants, to speak the 
 Truth, from respect for the right of defence in the 
 individual, forgetting that it is the duty of every man, 
 whether accused or not, to speak the Truth. 
 
 The acts of the Revolution will, I hope, demonstrate 
 how this conception condemned it, in its first long 
 stage, to waste its forces in the search for an impossible 
 harmony between two opposing principles, and in a 
 system oi guarantees, ineffectual in practical organisation, 
 instead of the positive and educational function of the 
 Government. Now, this is the only vital point to be 
 noted. The Instructions, important as they are, and 
 based in great part on truth, show a consciousness, 
 neither of the mission of life, nor of a collective end, 
 nor of the law of Progress as a nwthod, nor of association 
 as a meatis, nor of aught else that passes beyond the 
 horizon dimly viewed from the Christian heaven, or the 
 science of the individual.
 
 FROM THE COUNCIL TO GOD
 
 This essay was translated by Miss L. Martineau, and published in the 
 Fortnightly Rcvietv, June, 1870. " After Mentana he (Mazzini) left London 
 again lor Lugano to be nearer his work, and was constantly passing back- 
 wards and forwards between there and Genoa, finding time among it all 
 to write his great religious apology, the sum of all his teaching, ' From the 
 Council to God.'"— Maazini, by Bolton King, page 213.
 
 FROM THE COUNCIL TO GOD 
 
 A Letter to the Members of the (Ecumenical Council 
 
 One thousand five hundred and forty-four j^ears ago, 
 the first CEcumenical Council of behevers in the rehgion 
 of Jesus met together at Nice. You are now met 
 together in a new Council — your last — in Rome. The 
 first Council was the solemn and venerable consecration 
 of the triumph and organised unity of the religion 
 needed by the age. The present Council — whatever 
 you intend by it — will proclaim the great fact of the 
 death of a religion, and, therefore, of the inevitable and 
 not distant advent of another. 
 
 Thirty-seven years ago I wrote certain pages entitled, 
 From the Pope to the Council. In those pages — mis- 
 understood, as usual, by superficial readers — I declared 
 the Papacy to be morally extinct, and invoked the 
 meeting of a Religious Council to declare that fact to 
 the peoples. But the Council I desired was not yours. 
 It was a Council convoked by a free people, united in 
 worship of duty and of the ideal ; to be composed of 
 the worthiest in intellect and virtue among the believers 
 in things eternal, in the mission of God's creature upon 
 this earth, and in the worship of progressive truth ; 
 who should meet together for the purpose of religiously 
 interrogatmg the pulsations of the heart of Collective 
 Humanity, and to demand of that prophetic but un- 
 certain instinct of the future which exists in the peoples : 
 
 287
 
 288 From the Council to God 
 
 What portions of the old faith arc dead within you ? 
 What portions of the nciv faith are wakeiiing into life 
 within you ? 
 
 At a later period (in 1847), when the same Pope who 
 now bids you declare him Infallible was hesitating 
 between the suggestions of vanity flattered by popular 
 applause and the inherent tendencies of despotic power ; 
 when all the Italians, both learned and unlearned, 
 frantically endeavoured to make of him their leader in 
 their struggle for nationality and liberty : I alone — in a 
 letter also misunderstood — frankly declared to him the 
 truth : that a new faith ivas destiticd to take the place of 
 the old: that the neiv faith would not accept any privileged 
 Interpreter betiveen the people and God : and that, if he 
 desired to avail himself of the enthusiasm by which he 
 was surrounded, and become himself the initiator of the 
 new epoch and the new faith, he must descend from 
 the Papal throne, and go forth among the people an 
 apostle of truth, like Peter the Hermit preaching the 
 Crusades. I quote myself, reluctantly, that you may 
 know that, in thus addressing you, I am neither moved 
 by the hasty impulse of a rebellious soul, nor by foolish 
 anger at the Pope's withholding Rome from my country. 
 We shall have Rome — even before your fate is sealed — 
 so soon as the republican banner is again raised in 
 Italy. It is from a profound conviction, matured by 
 long and earnest meditation, and confirmed by the 
 study and experience of more than a third of a century, 
 that, in the face of a Pope who, by his syllabus, has 
 thrown his gauntlet of defiance to the idea of the 
 progressive mission of humanity in the face of a 
 Council composed of the members of one Church only, 
 without the intervention of any possible representa- 
 tives of the dawning Church of the future, I declare 
 to you : 
 
 That your faith is irrevocably doomed to perish : that, 
 whether as promoters of a new schism, if you separate 
 on the question of the Pope's pretensions, or as suicidal 
 destroyers of the primitive conception of your Church, 
 if you submerge it in the arbitrary will of an invfividual.
 
 From the Council to God 289 
 
 you are arid will be inevitably cut off from, and excom- 
 municated by, humanity ; and that we, who are believers 
 more than you, and more than you solicitous of a 
 religious future of the world, reject beforehand your 
 decrees, and appeal from your Council to God ; to God 
 the Father and Educator of man ; to the God of life, 
 not of things dead ; to the God of all men, not of a 
 caste. 
 
 II 
 
 The three hundred and twenty bishops who met 
 together at Nice did lawfully represent the multitude 
 of believers : they , were the issue of a democratic 
 inspiration, which is the soul of every rising faith : they 
 were the elect of the clergy and the people. 
 
 You are but a pitiful aristocracy, created and con- 
 secrated by power ; and, like the elements of all falling 
 institutions, without root in the heart of the Church, 
 the people of believers. You represent nothing but 
 a hierarchy, the reflex of the thought of others, in 
 which every spontaneous thought is regarded as re- 
 bellion. 
 
 The majority of the first Council bore upon their 
 brows the signs of sacred sorrow felt for the numberless 
 races of slaves disinherited of every human right, and 
 the traces of persecutions undergone for the sake of the 
 faith that promised them emancipation ; the greater 
 number of them were poor. 
 
 You make display of luxury and wealth — there is no 
 sign upon your brows of the sorrows that purify and 
 refine ; nor pallor, save that of constant inertia and idle 
 ease of indifference to the miseries of millions of 
 brothers given to you by God, and to the vital questions 
 by which our hearts are tormented. 
 
 In the face of the brute force of the corrupt and 
 tottering empire, whose frontiers echoed to the 
 threatening footsteps of the barbarians, those bishops 
 raised the banner of a moral idea, of a spiritual power.
 
 290 From the Council to God 
 
 destined to save civilisation, and win over the barbarians 
 to its rule. 
 
 You worship Force ; force which, from Prometheus 
 to Galileo, has ever sought to enchain the revealers 
 and precursors of the future to the motionless rock of 
 present fact. Before this force do you bow down 
 and preach to the peoples blind submission, even when 
 it violates the moral law ; as you invoke its aid, whether 
 proffered by infidels to your faith or not, when- 
 soever you are threatened in your usurped temporal 
 power. 
 
 The believers of Nice initiated an era, and blessed 
 the peoples congregated at its threshold. You are 
 struggling to recommence a worn-out and exhausted 
 past, and you curse the generation which will not, 
 cannot, follow you in your labour of Sisyphus. 
 
 I am no materialist. Young men of narrow intellect 
 and superficial education, but warm-hearted and irri- 
 tated to excess against a dead past which still would 
 dominate the present ; whose vanity is flattered by an 
 idea of intellectual daring ; who lack capacity to 
 discover in that which has been, the law of that which 
 shall be, are led to confound the negation of a worn-out 
 form of religion, with denial of that eternal religion 
 which is innate in the human soul ; and in them 
 materialism assumes the aspect of a generous rebellion, 
 and is often accompanied by power of sacrifice and 
 sincere reverence for liberty. But when diffused among 
 the peoples, materialism slowly but infallibly extinguishes 
 the fire of high and noble thought, as well as every 
 spark of free life, through the exclusive worship of 
 material well-being, and finally prostrates them before 
 successful violence, before the despotism of the 
 fait acco?npli. Materialism extinguished every spark of 
 Italian life amongst us three centuries ago ; as, eighteen 
 centuries earlier, it had extinguished all republican 
 virtue in Rome ; as it would — should it again be infused 
 among our multitudes — extinguish every germ of 
 future greatness in our newborn Italy. 
 
 Morally, materialism is disinherited of all criterion of
 
 From the Council to God 291 
 
 right, or principle of collective education. Between the 
 idea of an intelligent, preordained law, which assigns 
 to human life an aim, and the idea of a blind, unreason- 
 ing, fatal force of facts, or transitory phenomena, there 
 is no middle path ; and materialists, by ignoring the first, 
 are necessarily driven to the worship of the second, and 
 prostrate themselves, sooner or later, before the des- 
 potism (whether its metliod be Bonapartist bayonets or 
 republican guillotines is of little matter) of force. Ad- 
 mitting neither a providential conception regulating the 
 existence of collective humanity, nor the immortality of 
 the individual Ego, they may, illogically, utter the holy 
 words progress and duty ; but they have deprived the 
 first of its basis, and the second of its source. The 
 senseless, brutal doctrine cancels from men's minds the 
 only real virtue, sacrifice ; for, although individual 
 followers of that doctrine may be urged by a religious 
 instinct within them to fulfil it, they cannot teach it. 
 What avails martyrdom for a holy idea, when all pledge 
 of future benefit to the race, or even to the individual 
 himself, is destroyed? Amid the darkness of a world 
 deprived of all ideal ; in a brief, tormented existence, 
 ungoverned by any law save sensation and the appetites 
 to which it gives rise, the answer of mankind to every 
 moral lesson will be. Egotism. Such has, in fact, been 
 their answer in all those periods when a common faith 
 has passed away, and given place to the anarchy of cold 
 and sterile negations : paiiein et circenses : each for himself: 
 Interest, lord of all. 
 
 Scientifically, interest is based upon a periodical 
 confusion in men's minds of the instruments of life 
 with life itself; of the manifestations of the Ego, with 
 the Ego itself ; of the consequences and applications of 
 thought, with the thinking being itself; of the secondary 
 forces revealed in the operation of the organism, with 
 the initial force which excites, moderates, examines, 
 and compares those operations ; of the limited, transitory, 
 relative, and contingent phenomena which alone are 
 accessible to the organism, with the life which links 
 them all to that absolute and eternal truth which alone
 
 292 From the Council to God 
 
 gives value and significance to those phenomena ; of 
 the application of the human faculties to the eternal 
 world, with the faculties themselves ; of effects, with 
 causes ; of the real, with the ideal ; of facts, with the 
 law by which they are governed. 
 
 That Ego which reflects upon the phenomena of the 
 organism, is not that organism ; that life which forms 
 the harmony and unity of the whole, which consciously 
 and mindfully directs the special functions towards a 
 given aim, is not those functions themselves ; the being 
 which ponders of the future, of providence, of God, of 
 immortality, of the infinite, of choice between good and 
 evil ; which resists the impulse of the senses and denies 
 their sway — now in Athens and now on Golgotha ; now 
 in the prison of Petroni ^ and now on the national 
 battle-field, in sacrifice of self — is not those senses 
 themselves. 
 
 The experimentalism of those children lisping science 
 who call themselves materialists, is but one fragment of 
 science ; it simply verifies, through as many facts as it 
 can muster, the discoveries of intuition ; those sudden, 
 spontaneous discoveries made by the rapid, intense 
 concentration of all the faculties upon a given point. 
 And the facts themselves which, being embraced and 
 explained by hypothesis and discovery, demonstrate 
 truth, require, in order to be usefully observed, in- 
 terpreted and classified, the guidance of a principle, a 
 pre-accepted conception of law. Synthesis, the innate 
 supreme faculty of the human soul, illumines the path 
 of analysis from on high ; without its aid analysis could 
 but stumble uncertainly and impotently along a laby- 
 rinth of facts, of aspect and bearing constantly differing 
 according to their relation to other facts. 
 
 There is a harmony between the order of things 
 and the human mind, pre-existent to all experiment, 
 which does but ascertain and define that harmony. 
 Equally inaccessible to experiment are man's con- 
 
 ' Petroni, a distinguished lawyer of Bologna, had languished in the 
 Papal dungeons since 1853. He was offered a means of escape, but as 
 his fellow-prisoners were not included, he decided to remain with them.
 
 From the Council to God 293 
 
 sciousness of himself, the mode of transmission between 
 the inert, inorganic matter and the Hving and thinking 
 matter; the universal, perennial, and dominating in- 
 tuition which exists in a limited and imperfect world, 
 ruled (according to the materialist theory) by chance, or 
 the blind unconscious sequence of facts, of an ideal, a 
 conception of indefinite perfectibility ; the power of free 
 activity which exists in man ; the undeniable existence 
 within us of a something which is not enchained in any 
 special organ, but passes from one to another, ex- 
 amining, deciding upon, and connecting their operations ; 
 and the hourly visible influence of moral force, of will 
 upon the material world. 
 
 Experiment may give us the accidents, not the 
 essence of things ; to reach that essence, science must 
 maintain its connecting link with religion. Without a 
 theory or method, all real, true, and fruitful science is 
 impossible. The method is furnished by our conception 
 of the aim of life; the aim, once ascertained, affirms the 
 relation between man and humanity, between humanity 
 and the universe, the universe and God — law and life. 
 Now the aim, which is the discovery and progressive 
 realisation of the design according to which the universe 
 is evidently organised, and of which material laws are 
 the means, can only be found through a philosophical 
 religious conception. 
 
 Science reveals and masters the material and intellec- 
 tual forces given to man wherewith to realise the aim ; 
 but the aim itself is determined by the religious synthesis 
 of the period ; and the religious synthesis is the sanction 
 of the duty of each man to avail himself of those forces 
 in furtherance of the aim, according to his faculties. To 
 break this union is to render science sterile. Humanity 
 pursues a different course, and when the history of 
 science shall be rightly written, it will demonstrate that 
 to every great religion is attached a corresponding epoch 
 of fruitful scientific progress ; and that, although during 
 the periods of transition between the fall of one religion 
 and the rise of another. Science may discover phe- 
 nomena and collect facts which offer materials for the
 
 294 From the Council to God 
 
 new synthesis, she will misconceive alike their value 
 and their law, as is the case at the present day. 
 
 Historically, materialism is inexorably, invariably 
 representative and characteristic of a period of transition 
 between one religious faith and another, when all unity 
 of conception and of aim being lost, and lost every sense 
 of a common doctrine and true philosophic method, 
 human intellect invariably falls back upon the mere 
 anatomy of facts, refuses the guidance of synthesis, and 
 is left with one criterion of truth only— the Ego disjoined 
 from Collective Humanity and God — negation and 
 anarchy. It is but a funeral lamp that dimly illumines 
 a bier, and is only extinguished when, inspired by the 
 breath of the future, the bier is transformed into the 
 cradle of the new faith, not ascertained, but invoked by 
 the majority, and forefelt to be inevitable and near. 
 This moment is approaching more rapidly than is gener- 
 ally believed, in spite of all that you men of the past, 
 and true prolongers of the disastrous period of tran- 
 sition, can do to prevent it. 
 
 Meanwhile materialism denies humanity, in which the 
 religious sense, like the artistic and philosophical, is an 
 alienable element of life : it denies tradition — the 
 harmony of which with the voice of individual inspira- 
 tion and conscience is the sole criterion of truth we 
 possess on earth : it denies history, which teaches us 
 that religions are transitory, but Religion is eternal : it 
 denies the solemn witness borne in adoration of God 
 and the Ideal, by the long series of our greatest minds, 
 from Socrates to Humboldt, from Phidias to Michel - 
 Angelo, from ^schylus to Byron : it denies the power 
 of revelation innate in man, in order to date the dis- 
 covery of truth from the meagre labours upon a fragment 
 of creation studied by one single faculty of the mind of 
 a Moleshott, Buchner, or other. 
 
 Not for you do I write this — you are nearly all of you 
 practical materialists — but for my young fellow-country- 
 men, good, but misled ; and, because I hold that no 
 man who assumes to speak of the future' of our rising 
 Italy has henceforth a right to keep silence as to his own
 
 From the Council to God 295 
 
 religious belief, or to abstain from uttering his protest 
 against the irruptions of the Barbarians of thought who 
 rave amid the ruins of an epoch. 
 
 I am not ungrateful to that epoch, nor irreverent to 
 those grand ruins. I am not forgetful of the gigantic 
 step taken by humanity towards its destined aim, through 
 the religious faith in the name of which you are met 
 together. Neither have I forgotten that we owe to it, 
 not only the idea of the unity of the human family, and 
 of the equality and emancipation of souls, but also the 
 salvation of the relics of our anterior Latin civilisation, 
 and the recall of my fast-expiring country to the life half- 
 extinguished by her barbarian invaders, by awakening 
 her to the consciousness of her second mission in the 
 world. 
 
 The salvation of Christianity, and through it of Euro- 
 pean civilisation, through the unity of your hierarchy 
 during a period of darkness and anarchy — the spirit of 
 love towards the poor and afflicted outcasts of society, 
 which inspired your early bishops and popes — the 
 severe struggle sustained by them in the name of the 
 Moral law against the arbitrary power and ferocity of 
 feudal lords and conquering kings — the great mission 
 (misunderstood in our day by those who know nothing 
 or comprehend nothing of history) fulfilled by that giant 
 of intellect and will, Gregory VII., and the fruitful 
 victory won by him in aid of the rule of mind over royal 
 arms, of the Italian over the German element — the 
 mission of civilising conquest you fulfilled among semi- 
 barbarous peoples, the impulse given to agriculture by 
 your monks during the first three centuries, the preserva- 
 tion of the language of our fathers, the splendid epoch 
 of art inspired by faith in your dogma, the learned works 
 of your Benedictines, the commencement of gratuitous 
 education, the foundation of institutions of benevolence, 
 your sisters of mercy, — I remember all these things, and 
 bow down in reverence before the image of your past. 
 
 But wherefore do you, in a world wherein all things, 
 by God's decree, die and are transformed, seek to live 
 for ever? Why pretend that a past, which has been
 
 296 From the Council to God 
 
 extinguished for ever beneath five hundred years of 
 inertia and impotence, should live again in the future ? 
 How is it that, in the "face of three centuries of dis- 
 memberment into an infinitude of Protestant sects, and 
 of a century of philosophical incredulity ; amid the 
 reappearance of all those signs and warnings which 
 characterised the intermediate period between the fall 
 of Paganism and the rise of the Christian era, you see 
 not that your mission is concluded ; that the world is 
 urged onward in search of a new heaven and a new 
 earth ? Wherefore, in the face of the grand tradition 
 of humanity, throughout the course of which God reveals 
 to us the Law of life he gave to all ; which teaches you 
 through its succession of religions the gradual continuous 
 revelation of a Truth of which each historic epoch 
 acquires a fragment, and none the whole, do you persist 
 in believing, or asserting — you, whose religion had its 
 beginning, and who represent but one epoch among 
 many — that you hold that entire truth within your 
 grasp ? How dare you strive to violate alike the Pro- 
 vidential design and the free conscience of mankind, 
 by restricting within a given narrow, the limitless ascend- 
 ing spiral traced by the finger of God between the 
 universe and the Ideal it is destined slowly to attain ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 I do not accuse you, as do our copyists of other 
 (French or German) copyists of the eighteenth century, 
 of having- — impostors from the earliest times — built up 
 a religion in order to attain to power. Humanity does 
 not tolerate a lying Fable for eighteen hundred years. 
 If the majority amongst ourselves were believers as 
 fervent and sincere as were the men of your faith during 
 the first thirteen hundred years, God's new truth — of 
 which at present we have but faintest glimpses — would 
 already unite the multitudes in harmony of belief. 
 
 I do not accuse you of having disseminated errors, 
 which for long years past have impeded or misled 
 mankind upon questions which have become of vital
 
 From the Council to God 297 
 
 moment at the present day. Every religion is the issue 
 of the times, and the expression of an essentially im- 
 perfect stage in the education of the human race ; l)ut 
 each contains a truth destined to live for ever, although 
 overshadowed by passing error ; and that amount of 
 truth which it was possil)le for the age to accept and 
 to incarnate in action, was widely and beneficially diffused 
 by you. 
 
 I do not accuse you — though I might with better 
 foundation — of having been the inexorable persecutors 
 of all who differed from you. I remember how terror 
 was erected into a system, only sixty years back, by the 
 advocates of liberty ; and I know, moreover, that every 
 •religion founded upon the belief in an immediate, 
 direct, and superhuman revelation, cannot fail to be 
 intolerant. 
 
 I do not accuse you of persisting in the attempt to 
 nail us down to a conception of God and of the relation 
 between God and man belied by science, and against 
 which every faculty of heart and mind granted to man 
 for the discovery of truth, and matured by eighteen 
 hundred years of aspiration, study, suffering, and victory, 
 protest at the present day. 
 
 I do accuse you of maintaining a divorce between 
 faith and science— the two wings given to the creature 
 wherewith to elevate himself towards the divine Ideal — 
 which must inevitably result in mental slavery or 
 materialism. 
 
 I do accuse you of insanely pretending that a beacon 
 kindled eighteen hundred years ago to illumine our 
 journey across a single epoch, is destined to be our sole 
 luminary across the path of the infinite. 
 
 I do accuse you of destroying the unity of Collective 
 Humanity, by dividing mankind into two arbitrary 
 sections ; one devoted to error, and the other sacred 
 to truth ; and of blaspheming against the eternally 
 creative and revealing power of God, by imprisoning 
 the Word within an insignificant fraction of time and 
 space. 
 
 I accuse you of having utterly misunderstood the
 
 298 From the Council to God 
 
 holy soul of Jesus — superior to every other in aspiration 
 and fraternal love — by transforming Him, in despite of 
 His sublimest presentiments, into an eternal and vulgar 
 tyrant of souls. 
 
 I accuse you of having closed your eyes in vanity 
 and lust of power, and refused to perceive that, even as 
 one existence succeeds another, so does one mission 
 succeed another, and each and all are governed and 
 sanctified by a religious synthesis. 
 
 And, above and before all, I accuse you of living no 
 real life ; of having no other existence than that of the 
 phantoms seen wandering among tombs to delude 
 mortals into superstition, or degrade them by terror ; 
 but doomed to vanish at the first blush of dawn. 
 
 Life is love. You know no longer how to love. The 
 voice of your chief is only heard in groans of dis- 
 couragement ; the formula of your declarations is an 
 anathema. 
 
 Life is movement, aspiration, progress. You deny 
 progress ; shrink in terror from all aspiration ; crucify 
 humanity upon Calvary ; reject every attempt to detach 
 the idea from the symbol, and strive to petrify the living 
 Word of God. You reduce all history (which is the 
 successive manifestation of that Word) to a single 
 moment ; you extinguish free will (without which no 
 consciousness of progress can exist) beneath the fatalism 
 of hereditary responsibility, and cancel all merit in 
 works or sacrifice by the omnipotence of grace. 
 
 Life is communion : communion wath nature and 
 with man, wheresoever he loves, struggles, or hopes, 
 and with God. You have attempted, by denying the 
 continuity of creation, and the universal diffusion of 
 the creative spirit, to imprison the Deity in one sole 
 corner of the universe, and one brief period of the 
 immensity of time. You seek even now, by the immoral 
 antagonistic dualism you establish between earth and 
 heaven, to banish from men's minds all reverence for 
 nature (which is a form of the divine thought) ; and 
 you refuse, in the name of an individual salvation to be 
 achieved through faith and prayer, all communion with
 
 From the Council to God 299 
 
 the great collective sorrows, the holy battles, and the 
 emancipatory hopes of mankind. Kepler, when he 
 taught mankind how the universe opened upon the 
 field of the infinite on every side, felt God more than 
 you ; and Byron — whom you condemn as a sceptic — 
 worshipped Him more truly than you, when he sacrificed 
 wealth, genius, and life for the cause of liberty in 
 Greece. 
 
 Life is production : increase of that already gained ; 
 and you have for upwards of five centuries been 
 struggling, with ever lessening power, merely to con- 
 serve. 
 
 When a religion no longer either creates, determines 
 or directs action ; when it rouses no power of sacrifice ; 
 when it no longer harmonises and unites the different 
 branches of human activity ; when its vital conception 
 ceases to inform new symbols, or new manifestations in 
 art, science, or civil life — that religion is expiring. You 
 may still, by help of the deceptions of your ministers 
 and the pomp of your rites, gather a numerous con- 
 course of apparently devoted followers around you, and 
 you will continue to do so, so long as their sole choice 
 lies between the records of a faith once grand and 
 fruitful of good, and the arid negations of a brutalising 
 materialism ; but demand of these followers that they 
 should die for you and for the faith you represent, and 
 you will not find a martyr among them. You did not 
 find one when we confronted your banner with our own 
 in Rome, upon which was inscribed the Word of the 
 future, God and the People, and proclaimed — through 
 the unanimous vote of the very men who, the day 
 before, declared themselves believers in you — ^the 
 abolition of your temporal power and the Republic. 
 
 Your Pope fled in disguise, and all of you vanished 
 utterly \ the constant intrigues with which you en- 
 deavoured, when at Gaeta, to raise up internal enemies 
 amongst us, were fruitless. You were reduced to beg 
 the aid of bayonets, the instruments of the tortuous 
 policy and ambition of a vulgar pretender, whom you 
 well knew to be as infamous as he was unbelieving in
 
 300 From the Council to God 
 
 your doctrines. Our men died — they still die for the 
 sake of the glimpse vouchsafed them of that new faith 
 which, ere it has enlightened their intellects, has fired 
 and warmed their hearts — in dungeons, or upon the 
 scaffold or the battle-field, with a smile of defiance upon 
 their lips ; but around you I see none but mercenaries 
 greedy of rank pr gold. 
 
 Be not deceived : faith is perishing around you. Even 
 as lingering sparks still issue from a dying fire, the 
 expiring faith of the day finds its expression in the 
 prayers muttered before your altars through the force of 
 habit at stated brief moments ; it evaporates at the 
 church door, and no longer rules or guides men's daily 
 life : they give one hour to heaven and the day to earth 
 — to its material interests and calculations, or to studies 
 and ideas foreign to every religious conception. 
 
 Science proceeds onward ; regardless of your doctrine, 
 heedless of your anathema and of your councils, destroy- 
 ing at every step another line of the Book you declare 
 infallible. Art wanders in the void ; now retracing its 
 steps towards the pagan ideal, now doubtfully pursuing 
 religious aspirations other than yours ; and now, as if 
 in despair of finding any other God, reduced to worship- 
 ping itself; but always apart from the Christian synthesis, 
 always irresponsive to the conception which inspired 
 your architects and painters in ages past. 
 
 The iniquitous Governments of the day, to whom it 
 is a necessity to maintain your authority in order to prop 
 the tottering foundations of their own, deny it, none the 
 less, in the practical exercise of their power : " the law " 
 for them "is atheist," — the separation of the temporal 
 from the spiritual power is their supreme rule of guidance ; 
 and the very king who implores your benediction in secret, 
 affects before his subjects to despise it the day after. 
 
 The men of highest power, whether of intellect or 
 eloquence, belonging to your creed, from Lamennais 
 down to Pere Hyacinthe, detach themselves from you 
 one by one. Not a single one of the vast strides made 
 upon the path of progress in our age was either suggest-'^d 
 or consecrated by your faith.
 
 From the Council to God 301 
 
 Two nations, once sisters — the Greek and Italian — 
 have burst asunder the walls of the tomb wherein they 
 had lain buried for ages, and tliey have neither asked 
 nor could obtain one holy word of baptism from 
 you. 
 
 Four millions of black slaves have been emancipated 
 —in pledge of other emancipations — across the Atlantic, 
 in the name of the immortal human soul within them, 
 and they owe it to no crusade of yours, but to a war 
 of an exclusively political character, fought by men whose 
 sole idea was one of national unity. 
 
 Like the great German family at the downfall of 
 paganism, and as if as a warning of the approach of a 
 similar epoch, the Slavonian family is in movement 
 upon a zone extending from the North Sea to the 
 Adriatic, and eager to proffer its word at the fraternal 
 European banquet ; while you — the sometime distributors 
 of distant lands among the monarchs — appear scarcely 
 conscious of the fact. They ask for aid in their work, 
 not from you, but from us. 
 
 Mute, and disinherited alike of inspiration and affec- 
 tion, having abdicated all power of intervention in the 
 events that transform and improve God's earth, you, 
 who were once the world's centre, are gradually being 
 driven back to its extremest orbit, and are destined to find 
 yourselves at last alone in the void beyond. Motionless 
 sphinxes in the vast desert, you inertly contemplate the 
 shadow of the centuries as they pass. Humanity, whom 
 you should have guided, has gone otherwhere. Faith 
 is perishing among the peoples, because the dogma that 
 inspired it no longer corresponds to the stage of education 
 which they, in fulfilment of the providential plan, have 
 reached. 
 
 IV 
 
 The Christian dogma is perishing. The arch of the 
 Christian heaven is too narrow to embrace the earth. 
 Beyond that heaven, across the fields of the infinite, we 
 discern a vaster sky, illumined by the dawn of a new
 
 302 From the Council to God 
 
 dogma ; ^ and on the rising of its sun your own heaven 
 will disappear. We are but the precursors of that 
 dogma : few as yet, but earnestly believing ; fortified by 
 the collective instincts of the peoples, and sufficiently 
 numerous to convince you — had you sense to compre- 
 hend it — that when the tide of materialism shall recede, 
 you will find yourselves confronted by a far other foe. 
 
 We worship not anarchy : we worship Authority ; but 
 not the dead corpse of an authority, the mission of which 
 was concluded in a now distant past, and which can 
 therefore only perpetuate its power through tyranny and 
 falsehood. 
 
 The authority we revere is founded upon the free and 
 deliberate acceptance and popular worship of the truth 
 conquered by our epoch ; upon that conception of life 
 •which God reveals to mankind in time and measure 
 through souls devoted to Him and to His Law. 
 
 Your dogma may be summed up in the two terms. 
 Fall and Redemption ; our own in the terms Gob 
 and Progress. The intermediate term between the 
 Fall and Redemption is, for you, the Incarnation, at a 
 given moment, of the Son of God. 
 
 The intermediate term for us, between God and His 
 Law, is, the continuous and progressive incarnation of 
 that law in Humanity, destined slowly and gradually 
 to discover and to fulfil it throughout the immeasurable, 
 indefinite future. 
 
 The word Progress, therefore, represents to us, not 
 a mere scientific or historic fact, limited, it may be, to 
 one epoch, one fraction, or one series of the acts of 
 humanity, having neither root in the past, nor pledge 
 of duration in the future. It represents a religious 
 conception of life radically different from yours ; a divine 
 Law, a supreme formula of the eternal, omnipotent, 
 creative force, universal as itself. 
 
 ' By this word dogma— now generally misunderstood, because usurped 
 and accepted exclusively in the Christian sense — I mean a truth of the 
 moral order, which, usually perceived in the first instance by philosophy, 
 or prepared by the progress of science, and still more by the civil 
 condition of one or more peoples, becomes incarnate in the life of one or 
 more individuals privileged in love and virtue, and wins over the mind 
 of the multitude and gradually transforms itself into a religious axiom.
 
 From the Council to God 303 
 
 The root of every religion is a definition of life and 
 
 its mission. For you that definition of life is the doctrine 
 
 of Original Sin, and of resurrection to God through 
 
 faith in a Divine Being, who descended upon earth to 
 
 sacrifice Himself in expiation of that sin. 
 
 Our definition of life asserts the imperfection of the 
 finite creature, and its gradual self-correction by virtue 
 of a capacity of progression, given to all men, through 
 works; through the sacrifice of the egotistic instincts 
 for the sake of the common improvement, and through 
 faith in a divine Ideal, which each is bound to incarnate 
 in himself. 
 
 God, the Father and Educator ; the law prefixed by 
 Him to life, the capacity, inborn in all men, to fulfil 
 it ; free will, the condition of merit ; Progress upon the 
 ascent leading to God, the result of right choice — these 
 are the cardinal points of our faith. 
 
 In the dogma of Original Sin, which is the keystone 
 of your edifice (except the presentiment it contains of 
 that human solidarity which you do not comprehend), 
 we see nought but Evil profanely made the baptism of 
 life : the absolute impossibility of accounting for the 
 inequality of evil tendency manifested among men, and 
 an hereditary doom which denies alike human free will 
 and responsibility. 
 
 In the Redemption through the incarnation of the Son 
 of God (except the symbol it contains, by you neglected, 
 of that aspiration which impels the finite towards union 
 with the infinite) we only see subtraction made of the 
 divinely educating force ; the substitution of an arbitrary 
 fact for the majesty of a divine law ; a solution of the 
 continuity of the collective life of humanity, and the 
 sanction of an unjust dualism between the generations 
 anterior and posterior to the Cross. 
 
 From this diversity in the foundations of faith, follows 
 a series of consequences which affect both heaven and 
 earth — the Dogma and the Moral Code. 
 
 You believe in the divinity of Jesus. I can well 
 understand the origin of this belief in times when it 
 alone was able to secure the doubtful victory of Chris-
 
 304 From the Council to God 
 
 tianity ; when the idea of Progress was unknown, and 
 consequently unknown the conception of the gradual 
 manifestation of God through His Law. You could not 
 avoid attributing to the Announcer of truth a character 
 which would compel mankind to obey His precepts. 
 
 We, who at the present day believe in the continuous 
 revelation of God throughout the collective life of 
 humanity, have no need of a sole immediate Revealer 
 to teach us either to adore His power, or to feel His love. 
 
 The divine incarnation of both these attributes is 
 perennial in the great facts which bear witness to the 
 collectivity of life ; in the great intellects, sanctified by 
 virtue, who prophesy or interpret that universal life ; and 
 in the grand aspirations of individual conscience, which 
 foretell or accept truth. 
 
 We venerate in Jesus the Founder of the epoch that 
 emancipated individual man ; the Apostle of the unity 
 of the divine law, more largely understood than in times 
 anterior to His own ; the Prophet of the equality of 
 souls : we reverence in Him the Man who loved more 
 than any other ; whose life — an unexampled instance of 
 harmony between thought and action — promulgated as 
 the eternal basis of every future religion, the sacred 
 dogma of Sacrifice ; but we do not cancel the Woman- 
 born in the God ; we do not elevate Him to a height 
 whereunto we may not hope to follow Him : we love Him 
 as the best of our human brothers ; we do not worship 
 and fear Him as the inexorable Judge, or intolerant 
 Ruler of the future. 
 
 You believe — thus depriving yourselves of every basis 
 of intellectual certainty and criterion of truth — in 
 miracles ; in the supernatural ; in the possible violation 
 of the laws regulating the universe. 
 
 We believe in the Unknown ; in the Mysterious — to 
 be one day solved — -which now encompasses us on every 
 side ; in the secrets of an intuition inaccessible to 
 analysis ; in the truth of our strange presentiment of an 
 Ideal, which is the primitive fatherland of the soul ; 
 in an unforeseen power of action granted to man in certain 
 rare moments of faith, love, and supreme concentration
 
 From the Council to God 305 
 
 of all the faculties towards a determinate and virtuous 
 aim — deserved therefore — and analogous to the power 
 of revelation which the increased concentration of rays 
 in the telescope communicates to the human eye : but 
 we'believe all these things, the pre-ordained consequence 
 of laws hitherto withheld from our knowledge. 
 
 We do not believe in the miraculous, as you under- 
 stand it ; in the infringement of laws already known and 
 accepted by arbitrary will ; in facts in contradiction to 
 the general design of the creation, which would, we con- 
 sider, simply testify to a want of wisdom or of justice in 
 God. 
 
 You appeal in support of your theory to an idea of 
 divine Free Will. We deny it. We are free, because 
 imperfect : called to ascend, to deserve, and, therefore, to 
 choose between good and evil ; between sacrifice and 
 egotism. Such free will as ours is unknown to God, the 
 perfect Being, whose every act is necessarily identical 
 with the True and Just ; who cannot, without violation 
 of our every conception of His nature, be supposed to 
 break His own law. 
 
 You believe in a God who has created and reposes. 
 We believe in continuity of creation ; in a God the in- 
 exhaustible source of the Life diffused perennially 
 throughout the infinite ; of thought, which in Him is 
 inevitably identical with action ; of conceptions, realised 
 in worlds. 
 
 You believe in a heaven extrinsic to the universe : in 
 a determinate portion of creation, on ascending to which 
 we shall forget the past, forget the ideas and affections 
 which caused our hearts to beat on earth. We believe 
 in One Heaven, in which we live, and move, and love ; 
 which embraces — as an ocean embraces the islands that 
 stud its surface — the whole indefinite series of existences 
 through which we pass. We believe in the contitiuity 
 of life; in a connecting link uniting all the various 
 periods through which it is transformed and developed ; 
 in the eternity of all noble affections, maintained in con- 
 stancy until the last day of our existence ; in the influence 
 of each of these life-periods upon the others ; in the pro- 
 
 M
 
 3o6 From the Council to God 
 
 gressive sanctification of every germ of good gathered by 
 the pilgrim soul in its journey upon earth and other- 
 where. 
 
 You believe in a divine hierarchy of natures essentially 
 distinct from our own and immutable. From the solemn 
 presentiment enfolded in the symbol of the angel you 
 have deduced no better conception than that of a 
 celestial aristocracy — the basis of the conception of aris- 
 tocracy on earth — and inaccessible to man. We recognise 
 in the angel the soul of the just man who has lived in 
 faith and died in hope ; and in the inspiring, or guardian 
 angel, the soul of the creature most sacredly and con- 
 stantly loving and beloved by us on earth, having earned 
 the recompense of watching over and aiding us on earth. 
 The ladder 'twixt earth and heaven of Jacob's dream 
 symbolises, for us, the ascending and descending series 
 of man's transformations on the path of initiation in the 
 divine Ideal, and the beneficent influence exercised 
 over us by the beloved beings who have preceded us 
 upon that path. 
 
 You believe in an Eden surrounding the cradle of 
 mankind, and lost through the fault of our first parents ; 
 we believe in an Eden towards which God wills that 
 humanity — traversing the path of error and sacrifice — 
 shall constantly advance. You believe that the soul can 
 pass at one bound from its human existence to the 
 highest beatitude, or to absolute, irrevocable perdition. 
 We believe the human period of our existence too distant 
 from the highest ideal ; too full of imperfections to allow 
 that the virtue of which we are capable here below can 
 suddenly deserve to reach the summit of the ascent 
 leading to God. We believe in an indefinite series of re- 
 incarnations of the soul, from life to life, from world to 
 world ; each of which represents an advance from the 
 anterior ; and we reject the possibility of irrevocable per- 
 dition as a blasphemy against God, who cannot commit 
 self-destruction in the person of the creature issued from 
 himself; as a negation of the law prefixed to life, and as 
 a violation of the idea of love which is identical with 
 God. It may be that we shall retraverse the stage over
 
 From the Council to God 307 
 
 which we have already passed, if we have not deserved 
 to ascend beyond it, but we cannot, spiritually, either 
 retrogress or perish. 
 
 You believe in the resurrection of the body, such as 
 it was at the termination of our earthly existence ; we 
 believe in the tra?tsforma(ioti of the body (which is 
 naught other than an instrument adapted to the work 
 to be achieved) in conformity with the progress of the 
 Ego, and with the mission destined to succeed the 
 present. 
 
 All things are, in your creed, definite, limited, im- 
 mediate, bearing the stamp of a certain immobility, 
 which recalls the characteristics of the materialist con- 
 ception of life. In our creed all is life, movement, 
 succession, and continuity. 
 
 Our world opens upon the infinite on every side. 
 Your dogma humanises God : our dogma teaches the 
 slow, progressive divinisatioii of man. 
 
 You believe in grace ; we believe in justice. You, 
 by believing in grace, believe — more or less explicitly, 
 but inevitably — in predestination, which is but a trans- 
 formation of the pagan and aristocratic dogma of the 
 two natures of man. Grace, according to you, is neither 
 granted to all, nor to be achieved through works ; it is 
 arbitrarily bestowed by the Divine Will, and the elect 
 are few. We believe that God called us, by creating 
 us ; and the call of God can neither i:)e impotent nor 
 false. Grace, as we understand it, is the tendency and 
 faculty given to us all gradually to incarnate the Ideal ; 
 it is the law of progress which is His ineffaceable baptism 
 upon our souls. 
 
 That law must be fulfilled. Time and space are 
 granted to us wherein to exercise our free will. We 
 can — through our action and endeavour — hasten or 
 delay the fulfilment of the law in time and space ; 
 multiply or diminish the trials, struggles, and sufferings 
 of the individual ; but not, as the dualism taught by 
 your dogma would do, eternise evil, and render it 
 victorious. Good only is eternal : God only is vic- 
 torious.
 
 3o8 From the Council to God 
 
 Meanwhile, that dualism which dominates your 
 doctrine o{ grace, oi predestination, oi hell, of redemption 
 half-way upon the historic development of humanity, 
 and every portion of your Dogma inspires and limits 
 your Moral Code, and renders it irremediably imperfect 
 and inefificacious to guide and direct human IJfe at the 
 present day. 
 
 V 
 
 Your dogma is expiring. Your moral code is there 
 fore rendered sterile and expires with it. It is deprived 
 of its origin and its sanction \ of that faith in the duty 
 and necessity of regulating human life by its precepts, 
 whence it derived its power to govern men's individual 
 instincts, passions, and free will. You have but to look 
 around you in order to perceive this. 
 
 The moral code is eternal you say, and you point 
 to the precepts of love towards God and man, of sacri- 
 fice, of duty, of preference given to the salvation of 
 the soul over the desires and interests of a day. 
 
 Yes ; those precepts spoken by the lips of Jesus do 
 live, and will live; they are as undying as our gratitude 
 towards Him, His cross, as symbol of the sole en- 
 during virtue — sacrifice of self for others — may still 
 be planted, without any contradiction, upon the tomb 
 of the believer in the new religion ; but a moral code 
 which is to have a fruitful, active influence upon man- 
 kind requires far more than this. 
 
 The precept of love, which is inborn within the 
 human soul, is the basis, more or less apparent, of all 
 religions ; but each religion gives a different value and 
 larger interpretation to that general formula of Duty. 
 The moral problem, the solution of which progrtsses 
 with the epoch, is the problem how we are to worship 
 God, how we are to love man, how we are to work out 
 the soul's salvation ; and it is the mission of the religion 
 of each epoch to give the force of a law, supreme over 
 all and equally binding upon all, to the definition of 
 the How, and to compel the fulfilment of the duty thus
 
 From the Council to God 309 
 
 defined by linking it with heaven, tracing it back to 
 the Divine conception of the creation. Even if your 
 moral code were sufificient for the intelligence and 
 aspirations of the epoch it would still remain sterile ; 
 a mere inert, inefficacious dead letter, because this link 
 is lost. Your heaven exists no longer, your conception 
 of creation is proved false. The telescope has destroyed 
 it for ever in the fields of the infinite ; geology has 
 destroyed it on earth ; the recently recovered tradition 
 of the past of humanity has destroyed it in the kingdom 
 of intelligence, and the presentiment within us of a new 
 law of life has destroyed it in our hearts. But your 
 moral code, holy as it was before it had become adul- 
 terated by your corruption, intolerance, and cowardly 
 compromise with the atheistic powers of the world, is 
 unequal to the obligations imposed upon us by God. 
 The dualism of your dogma, transferred into your 
 moral code, generated that antagonism between earth 
 and heaven, matter and spirit, body and soul, which, no 
 matter to what grade of the doctrine you belong, 
 essentially narrowed your conception of the unity of 
 life, and of its mission here and elsewhere, rendering it 
 impossible that the great social questions of the day 
 should be solved through help of your religion. 
 
 In the face of an empire believed to be omnipotent, 
 and founded upon the prestige of material force placed 
 between a religion which sanctioned the dogma of the 
 two human natures (freeman and slave) and a philosophy 
 which consigned mankind to the dominion of fatality, 
 in a world of which there existed no conception of the 
 collective life of humanity, or of an innate faculty of 
 progress in individual man — having to address himself 
 to men either intoxicated with tyranny and lust, or 
 crushed by poverty and the abject servility induced by 
 despair of a better future — it was impossible for Jesus 
 to conceive any other mission for the benefit of the 
 brother- men He loved so well, than that of effecting 
 their moral regeneration, or any other consolation for 
 their wretchedness on earth than that of creating for 
 them a country of free men and equals in heaven. It
 
 3IO From the Council to God 
 
 was His purpose to teach men how to save, to redeem 
 themselves, in spite of, and against, the earth. 
 
 From the legend of the temptation, in which the 
 earth is evidently the heritage of the evil spirit, down 
 to the " render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's " 
 of the three first Gospels ; from the opposition between 
 the law of God and the flesh, of Paul (Rom. vii.), down 
 to the "love not the world," of John (2 Ep. ii. 15), 
 the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles constantly 
 insist upon our divorce from all terrestrial things, as a 
 condition of moral improvement, of salvation. In their 
 eyes our earthly abode is overshadowed by the curse 
 of sin and temptation ; and our sole hope of salvation 
 from this curse lies in our suicide of the man within us. 
 As Tell, even in the midst of the tempest, spurned from 
 him the bark that bore the oppressor, each of us is 
 held bound to spurn from him the earth, to cast loose 
 every tie that binds him to it, in order to raise himself 
 on the wings of faith to heaven. 
 
 The result of these teachings is a moral code which 
 may be thus summed up : — Adoration of God, and faith 
 in Christ, as the necessary intermediate to our salvation ; 
 renunciation of every natural desire ; abdication of every 
 aim of social transformation ; indifference to every 
 earthly good ; resigned acceptance of every existing evil, 
 either as a means of expiation, or of imitation of the 
 sufferings of Jesus ; war to the body and to the senses ; 
 submission to the powers that be ; exclusive importance 
 given to the work of internal purification, especially to 
 the realisation within ourselves of faith in heavenly 
 grace. 
 
 The holy nature of Jesus's own mind diffused a 
 breath of love over the whole of his teachings, and 
 generated a spirit of charity and disposition to good 
 works in his hearers ; but it was the love of men who, 
 despairing of vanquishing the evil existing in the world, 
 sought only to alleviate the more immediate sufferings 
 of individuals. Christian charity was rather a means of 
 purifying one's own soul, than the sense of a common 
 aim which it was God's will that man should realise
 
 From the Council to God 311 
 
 here below. It did not overpass the limits of benevo- 
 lence, and led the believers in the new religion to feed 
 the hungry, clothe the naked, and heal the sick with 
 whom they came in contact ; but to no attempt to 
 destroy the causes of human hunger and misery. Even 
 as the earth itself was despised, so were all the good 
 things of the earth to be despised as a perennial source 
 of temptation, and the gifts to the poor and to the 
 Church testified to this belief. Poverty itself was 
 preached by the majority of Jesus's followers as a 
 blessed mortification of the flesh, and regarded by all 
 as an incontestable necessity. Love of country, and 
 that love which embraces the generations of the future, 
 and is devoted even unto sacrifice for their sake ; that 
 love which will not tolerate the brand of inequality or 
 slavery on the brow of a brother-man, was unknown to 
 Christian morality. The true country, the real home of 
 Christian free men and equals, was heaven ; every man 
 was bound to direct his course thither ; and the greater 
 his sufferings on earth, the stronger the hope he might 
 entertain of his soul's future, and of celestial joy. The 
 world was abandoned to Satan. Religion taught man to 
 renounce it ; religion, which was alike his isolation 
 and his refuge ; it imposed no mission of earnest and 
 resolute struggle, and of slowly progressive but certain 
 victory. 
 
 Such was, such is, your Moral Code. Solitary con- 
 templation and monastic life were its first logical 
 consequences. At a later period, when you were 
 triumphant, when the necessity, which all religions 
 undergo, of transforming society in their own image, 
 compelled you to mingle in social and political life, you 
 frequently (with immense advantage to civilisation) 
 obeyed that uncertain and instinctive sense of right and 
 equality which lies at the root of your religion ; but it 
 was simply as a fact, not as a doctrine, and did not in 
 any way alter the educational principle of your Moral 
 Code ; which was incarnated historically in the dualism 
 of the temporal and the spiritual powers — the Papacy 
 and the empire. The greatest of your Popes, Gregory VI I, ,
 
 312 From the Council to God 
 
 attempted to crush this dualism beneath the omni- 
 potence of moral force ; but he failed, and died in exile. 
 The greatest of your philosophers, Thomas Aquinas, 
 attempted to destroy the antagonism between the soul 
 and the body, through a definition of man borrowed 
 from Aristotle ; but it was too late ; not even the decrees 
 of your Council of Vienna, in support of his attempt, 
 could transform a moral code which had been identified 
 with the Christian Conception of Life for thirteen 
 centuries. 
 
 Your religion was the religion of individual man. It 
 did not — it could not, at its origin, contemplate collective 
 humanity. It aspired towards the ideal, the divine, and 
 would, had it been possible, have sought to realise its 
 ideal on earth. But the instrument failed it. The 
 short, imperfect life of the individual (beyond which 
 this conception did not extend) is incapable of its 
 realisation. Your religion, as if to avenge its own 
 impotence, cried anathema upon the terrestrial world, 
 and referred the solution of the problem to the world 
 of grace — to heaven. 
 
 Herein lies the secret of all you have achieved, and 
 of all you have failed to achieve. 
 
 Christianity is the religion of individual man. The 
 vast religious synthesis through which we are gradually 
 advancing towards the realisation of the ideal, is resolved 
 like an equation containing an indefinite number of 
 unknown quantities. Every religious epoch disengages 
 one such unknown quantity, and classes one more term 
 of the problem among the known quantities, never more 
 to be disputed. Two grand primary epochs — the 
 gigantic Aryan religions of the East— concentrated their 
 intelligence, inspiration, and labour upon the two terms 
 • — God and Nature. But in both these epochs, the ideal 
 man (crushed by spiritualist or materialist pantheism) 
 was absent. While Mosaism elaborated the idea of the 
 divine unity, and preserved the sacred deposit for 
 futurity by incarnating it in a people, a third great epoch 
 assumed (in Europe) the office of disengaging the human 
 unknown— beginning with the individual— and adding
 
 From the Council to God 313 
 
 it to the number of known quantities. As the human 
 individual manifests Hfe under two aspects, personal and 
 relative — represented by the two terms, liberty and 
 equality^ — so that epoch was divided into two long 
 periods. 
 
 In the first period, polytheism affirmed the individual, 
 and elaborated his emancipation within certain narrow 
 limits, evolving — in the Greco-Roman world — the idea of 
 liberty. During the first labour of elaboration, however, 
 and in the intoxication of rebellion against Oriental 
 pantheism, the conception of the Divine unity was 
 broken up into fragments, and all basis of durability 
 was thus destroyed. 
 
 In the second period, your religion, having inherited 
 from Moses its belief in the Divine unity, rei)laced the 
 Deity at the apex of the pyramid, and fulfilled its mission 
 with regard to the problem of the individual, by defining 
 his relative life, proclaiming the equality of souls, and 
 declaring all men the children of one Father. 
 
 Such was the historic mission of Christianity ; nor 
 was it possible that the epoch, when — as it invariably 
 happens — it deduced its political and economic con- 
 stitution from its religion, should advance beyond the 
 limits of the doctrine of the individual, and the two 
 terms (liberty and equality) by which that doctrine is 
 represented. When the Protestant sects — moved by the 
 corruption of Catholicism — sought to recall the multi- 
 tudes to initial Christianity, they were unable to discover 
 any other criterion of truth than individual conscience. 
 The great political and social revolutions which, towards 
 the close of the last century, attempted (knowingly 
 or unknowingly) to realise the Christian principles in 
 practical life, summed up their whole labour and 
 endeavour in a declaration of the rights common to 
 every individual, and prefixed as sole governing law of 
 the development of the double life — moral and material 
 — of mankind, the insufticient rule of liberty. 
 
 God ; God and Nature ; God, Nature, and Man — 
 three cantos of the gigantic religious Epopea which has 
 the ideal for its subject and the generations for its poet.
 
 3J4 From the Council to God 
 
 Wherefore do you pretend that God and the generations 
 shall now be dumb ? Wherefore should we bury in 
 your sepulchre an inspiration inseparable from life itself, 
 and silence the new canto rising to the lips of creation, 
 which has for its theme — God, Nature, Man, and 
 Humanity ? Wherefore should not the new heaven, 
 of which we already have dim prevision, be represented 
 by a new earth ? the new dogma, by a new Moral Code ? 
 
 VI 
 
 The earth is of God ; it cannot be accursed. Life, 
 like the God from whom it springs, is One and ever- 
 lasting ; it cannot be broken up into fragments, or 
 divided into periods of a character radically opposed. 
 There is no antagonism between matter and spirit. 
 Matter gives forms to thought ; symbols to the idea ; 
 means of communication between being and being. 
 The body, given by God as the earthly tenement of the 
 individual, and the means of communication between 
 His life and that of the external world, is not the seat 
 of evil or temptation. Evil and temptation, wherever 
 they do exist, exist in the Ego : the body is the instru- 
 ment which translates either good or evil into action, 
 according to our free choice. The dualism between 
 the temporal and spiritual power is an immoral con- 
 ception, without any basis in the nature of things. The 
 moral law — once recognised and accepted — ought to be 
 supreme ; and the mission of the temporal power is its 
 application to the civil and economic realities of life. 
 Wherever such is not the case, either the moral law is — 
 as yours is at the present day — -the corpse or lying 
 phantom of law, or he whose duty it is to translate it into 
 action is false to it and is immoral. 
 
 The earth is of God. It is a step upon the infinite 
 ascent that leads us to heaven : our sojourn during one 
 of our existences, wherein we are bound to prepare 
 ourselves for the next. It is neither a dwelling of 
 expiation nor an arena of temptation. The necessity 
 of purification from sins committed, and the temptations
 
 From the Council to God 315 
 
 to evil which are conditions of our free will, exist in 
 ourselves ; and will accompany us in every ulterior 
 evolution of the life of the Ego. The earth is the 
 sphere wherein we have an appointed mission to perform, 
 with instruments of laljour furnished by it ; and we are 
 bound to regard it with love and reverence, as the seat 
 of our possible sanctification. In the ascending series 
 of worlds, separate stages of the long pilgrimage of the 
 Ego, the earth also has its appointed place ; it also is — 
 within prescribed limits — the cradle of the ideal ; an 
 incarnation — in time and space — of the eternal world ; 
 a note in the immense concord which harmonises and 
 embraces creation ; an essential link of the chain which 
 unites the universe with the throne of God. 
 
 Life is a mission : human existence that portion of it 
 which we have to accomplish here on earth. To 
 discover, comprehend, and intellectually to master that 
 fragment of the divine law which is accessible to human 
 faculties, to translate it in action (as far as human 
 powers allow), here, where God has placed us, is our 
 aim, our duty. We are each and all of us bound to 
 strive to incarnate in humanity that portion of eternal 
 truth which it is granted to us to perceive ; to convert 
 into an earthly reality so much of the " kingdom of 
 heaven " — the divine conception permeating life — as it 
 is given to us to comprehend. Thus doing, we are 
 slowly elaborating in man the angel ; failing to do this, 
 we shall have to retrace our path. 
 
 The moral code deduced from our dogma preaches 
 therefore to man : 
 
 " Seek not to isolate yourselves : imprison not your 
 soul in sterile contemplation, in solitary prayer, in pride 
 of individual purification, in pretending to a grace which 
 no faith not realised in works can enable you to deserve. 
 Be not deceived by the doctrine that salvation may be 
 achieved in spite of, and in opposition to, the earth. 
 You can only achieve it through the earth. You can 
 only save yourselves by saving others. God asks not, 
 What have you done for your soul ? but, What have you 
 done for the brother souls I gave you? Think of
 
 3t6 From the Council to God 
 
 these : leave your own to God and His law. Labour 
 unweariedly for others' good : such action is the holiest 
 prayer. In God, thought and action are one. Seek to 
 imitate Him from afar. Aim not at contemplating God 
 in Himself: you cannot do it. Contemplate Him in 
 His works. Say not in dismay, the works of God are 
 great, and I am nothing. God, by breathing into you a 
 breath of His life, has decreed that you also are of 
 worth. His works are your teachers ; were it not so, 
 would He have spread them around you ? Seek in 
 them His design, a syllable of the conception which is 
 the soul of creation. Study that conception without 
 foolish pride or hypocritical modesty, in the history of 
 collective humanity, throughout which He gradually 
 reveals to us the law of progress prefixed by Him to 
 life. Study Him — purifying your heart as a sanctuary 
 from every base passion, guilty desire, or idolatrous 
 superstition — in the secret aspirations of your own soul ; 
 in those instincts of truth which spring up within you 
 in supreme moments of devotion or affection ; then 
 when you have mastered that syllable of the law, caught 
 that ray of the divine conception, rise, calm in con- 
 viction, and strong in will, priests and apostles of that 
 which you know to be the aim of life. Let every word 
 speak faith in it, every act represent it. All that is in 
 harmony with it is good ; all that tends to divert from it, 
 evil. Help the first earnestly, combat the last openly. 
 
 " Avoid alike the vanity which makes display of duty, 
 and the resignation that shrinks from its fulfilment and 
 submits to evil. Evil is here to be fought against ; 
 that we, who have free choice, may deserve. When 
 victory is impossible, count martyrdom a benediction of 
 God. The angels of martyrdom and of victory are 
 brothers ; both extend their protecting wings over the 
 cradle of your future life. 
 
 " Hold in honour your body, your faculties, and the 
 material forces that surround you in nature. Instru- 
 ments given to you by God for the discovery and 
 lulfilment of your appointed aim, they are good or evil 
 according as they are used for others' benefit, or for
 
 From the Council to God 317 
 
 your own ; for egotism is the root of all evil, as sacrifice 
 is the root of all virtue, and he who cries anathema on 
 them, cries anathema on God. 
 
 " Say not that wealth and material power are of 
 Satan. Wealth is blessed when employed to relieve 
 sorrow and suffering ; accursed, when employed to 
 minister to selfish passion, pleasure, or pride : blessed, 
 when it emancipates a people ; accursed, when it builds 
 up the dominion of a single man, and denies God's 
 law of progress. All that exists is given for use and 
 aid, and you sin equally by neglect or misuse. 
 
 " You are bound to endeavour to transform the 
 earthly dwelling assigned to you for a time into a visible 
 temple of the law : a gem of the crown the worlds are 
 fashioning for the Eternal ; and each of you may do 
 this according to his sphere, if he look beyond the 
 limited horizon of self Look from the family to the 
 commune ; from the commune to the nation ; from the 
 nation to humanity ; from humanity to the universe ; 
 from the universe to God. Let every act be such as, 
 if accepted as the rule by the whole generation, would 
 increase the actual sum of good, or decrease the actual 
 sum of evil ; and be you an unlettered peasant or a 
 ruler of men, your merit will be equal, and your tomb 
 the cradle of a new life, higher upon the scale of progress 
 than your own. 
 
 " Love God in your fellow-men : men in the progress 
 to be achieved for them and with them. Hold as 
 offensive to God all that offends the dignity of the 
 human being bound to worship Him ; all that hinders 
 the intellectual development of the being bound to 
 comprehend Him gradually through his design ; all 
 that violates the liberty of the being bound to attune 
 his life to that design ; all that contaminates by cor- 
 ruption, materialism, superstition, or falsehood the being 
 destined progressively to incarnate the ideal in itself. 
 Combat such evils by example, word, and deed, and 
 call upon your brother men to combat with you. Evil 
 is not eternal ; but the battle against it must be a 
 crusade, for the conquest of the ideal demands the
 
 3i8 From the Council to God 
 
 effort of entire humanity, the sum of all the faculties 
 vouchsafed to it by God. Develop these faculties by 
 association as intimately and widely as possible. Asso- 
 ciation, the sole method of progress, is^ substituted for 
 charity — the religious word of the epoch. Let help, 
 given to individual suffering and consolation to him 
 that weeps, constitute for you the joys of life. Let 
 the sorrows of those who suffer afar off be equally 
 sacred ; be your life's duty a watch in the night. Your 
 battle is not with the effects, but with the causes of 
 evil : wheresoever those causes are sustained by law 
 or opinion, wheresoever you behold upon God's creature 
 the stamp of inequality or slavery, there is the sign of 
 Satan ; and be that sign on the brow of the negro, 
 the working man, or the woman, you are bound to 
 raise, with deeper meaning than of yore, the old Hussite 
 cry, ' The Cup for all ! ' and either conquer or die, that 
 others may. 
 
 " The earth's hymn to God can only be worthily 
 sounded by the lips of freemen united in a common 
 aim. Wrest from Satan the kingdoms of the earth with 
 which he tempted Jesus ; then may you stand erect 
 in conscious duty done and raise that hymn. Let the 
 banner of the new faith, God, Progress, Humanity, 
 head the crusade. God, the origin and end of all ; 
 progress, the law He gave to life; humanity, the inter- 
 preter, in God's own time and throughout all time, 
 of that law. Deduce your rule of action from that 
 faith, combat for the earth on the earth, but with eyes 
 raised to heaven. Be your love the love that gives 
 and receives support upon the ascending path of life. 
 Hate the sin, but never the sinner : he bears within 
 him (though stifled now by egotism) germs of the same 
 virtues that are in yourselves, and destined yet to be 
 developed. Love in him your brother of the future. 
 Punish not : protect the society in which you live, and 
 educate the erring members of it. Preach not, labour 
 not, in the name of rights which do but represent the 
 individual ; but in the name of duty, which represents 
 the aim of all. You have no rights, save as the con-
 
 From the Council to God 319 
 
 sequence of duties fulfilled ; they may all be summed 
 up in the one right, that others should fulfil towards 
 you the duty you fulfil towards them. Say not the 
 sovereignty is in us. The sovereignty is in God. The 
 will of the people is sacred only when it interprets and 
 applies the moral law. It is impotent or null when 
 it departs from it, and represents naught other than 
 tyranny. 
 
 " Transform not yourselves from believers into 
 idolaters by accepting any privileged interpreters be- 
 tween yourselves and God. The sun of God shines 
 on all, the Word of God must illumine all. Earth's 
 mists arise between you and the sun, and clouds of 
 error, superstition, and egotism intervene between the 
 human soul and God ; but you can chase those clouds 
 from the soul by educating it to religion, sacrifice, and 
 love, and between you and God extend the links of 
 the long and sacred chain of martyrs of thought and 
 love, who still remember and love the earth whereon 
 they accomplished a mission. 
 
 '* Be your priests and counsellors in all the doubts 
 and agitations of conscience those whom long years of 
 tried virtue, and study of things eternal, have proved 
 worthy to be such. Prophets and guides upon the 
 weary pilgrimage of humanity are the men upon whose 
 brow God has set the seal of genius sanctified by virtue ; 
 but forget not that the Divine element exists also in 
 yourselves ; never yield up the liberty of your immortal 
 souls into the hands of your brother-man. Love, honour, 
 and follow, but serve not. Respect in yourselves 
 that human unity which is a reflex of the unity Divine. 
 The false philosophy of the day has, in the absence of 
 a religious faith, broken up that unity, by parcelling it 
 out into faculties of reason, sentiment, and sensation, 
 and some have worshipped one and some another of 
 these faculties ; but remember that neither thought, 
 aspiration, nor economic fact constitutes life : they are 
 but the instruments of life, equally necessary and equally 
 sacred when united in action towards the realisation of 
 its aim, the progressive incarnation of the ideal ; and
 
 320 From the Council to God 
 
 respect alike the inviolability of thought, the sanctity of 
 aspiration, and the organised development of the material 
 faculties, without which the development of the rest is 
 impossible. 
 
 " Let labour be the basis of civil society, and let the 
 distribution of its fruits be according to works. Let 
 him who will not labour possess naught. 
 
 " Hold sacred the religious faith which unites the 
 millions in a common part of love and action, but hold 
 sacred also the heresy wherein, it may be, lies the germ 
 of the faith of the future. Represent the first in your 
 rites and fraternal associations, but fail not to protect 
 the second from all intolerance. 
 
 " You owe to all men education founded upon your 
 religious synthesis, but forget not that the supreme 
 conception of that religion is progress, and let the last 
 words of that education be these : we have made known 
 to you the moral law, in the name of which the brothers 
 amongst whom you are called to live and labour are 
 associated ; but remember that life is given to you in 
 order that you may endeavour to improve the society 
 in which you live, to purify and enlarge its faith, and 
 to urge forward on the path of eternal truth the men 
 who surround you, and who will bless your work." 
 
 You may cast your dying anathema on this moral 
 code, but, humble individual as I am, I declare to you 
 that the time is not far off, when it will take the place 
 of that which you, while daily violating it in your actions, 
 proclaim eternal. 
 
 VII 
 
 No ; the Book of God is not closed. And you who 
 blaspheme against the Omnipotent by declaring yourselves 
 the depositaries of its last page, give the lie to the 
 sublimest previsions of Jesus, to the prophetic words 
 recorded in the divinest of your four Gospels, words 
 which alone would suffice to constitute the superiority 
 of Christianity over all anterior religions. 
 
 " God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must 
 worship Him in spirit and in truth." — John iv. 24.
 
 From the Council to God 321 
 
 " And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you 
 another Comforter, that He may abide with you for 
 ever." — John xiv. i6. 
 
 " Even the Spirit of truth ; ... for He dwelleth 
 with you, and shall be in you." — Ibid. xiv. 17. 
 
 " I am the true vine and My Father is the husband- 
 man." — Ibid. XV. I. 
 
 " Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh 
 away : and every branch that beareth fruit. He purgeth 
 it, that it may bring forth more fruit." — Ibid. xv. 2. 
 
 " It is expedient for you that I go away : for if I go 
 not away, the Comforter will not come unto you " — 
 Ibid. xvi. 7. 
 
 " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye 
 cannot bear them now." 
 
 " Howbeit when He the spirit of truth is come, He 
 will guide you unto all truth : for He shall not speak of 
 Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He 
 speak: and He will show you the things to come." — 
 Ibid. xvi. 12, 13. 
 
 All the greatest thinkers, from Prometheus to Socrates 
 and Plato, and from them down to our own time, have 
 prophesied the fall of one belief and the rising of another. 
 None had prevision, like Jesus, of the characteristics of 
 the future faith. One of those rare intuitions, which 
 make of Him a type hitherto unique amongst men, 
 inspired the words above quoted, linking His own faith 
 to the faith to come. It seems as if the symbolic forms 
 of religion, the transformatory work of time upon them, 
 the sanctity of universal tradition, and the continuous 
 revelation of the Spirit of God through humanity, were 
 all foreseen by Him, on the eve of the sacrifice He had 
 accepted ; when the darkness of the future was illumined 
 by the immense love He bore to His fellow-men. You 
 are no longer capable of love or sacrifice, and, therefore, 
 those words have no meaning for you ; unintelligible as 
 the warning at the banquet of Belshazzar. 
 
 You will die, then — fate so wills it — but instead of 
 dying in love, like Jesus, and invoking the coming of the 
 Comforter to mankind, you are doomed — as I formerly 
 
 N
 
 322 From the Council to God 
 
 declared to you — to die the saddest of all deaths, with 
 curses on your lips. 
 
 The Book of God is not closed. The coming genera- 
 tions are not disinherited ; they who preceded Jesus 
 were not accursed. Children of God all of them, 
 identical in faculties and tendencies, they transmit from 
 each to each, in brightness growing with the growth of 
 time and their own endeavour, the lamp of life kindled 
 by Him, and fed and nourished by His Spirit. Revela- 
 tion, which is, as Lessing says, the education of the 
 human race, descends continuously from God to man ; 
 prophesied by genius, evoked by virtue and sacrifice, 
 and accepted and proclaimed from epoch to epoch, by 
 the great religious evolutions of collective humanity. 
 
 From epoch to epoch the pages of that eternal gospel 
 (which Italians, neglected by us and persecuted by you, 
 were the first to foretell) are turned ; each fresh page, 
 disclosed by the ever-renovating Spirit of God, indicates 
 a period of the progress marked out for us by the 
 providential plan, and corresponds, historically, to a 
 religion. Each religion sets before mankind a new 
 educational idea as its aim ; each is a fragment, en- 
 veloped in symbols, of eternal truth. So soon as that 
 idea, comprehended by the intelligence, and incarnated 
 in the hearts of mankind, has become an inalienable 
 part of universal tradition, even as the mountain traveller 
 on reaching one summit beholds another rising above 
 him, so is a new idea or aim presented to the human 
 mind, and a new conception of life, a faith, arises to 
 consecrate that idea, and unite the powers and activity 
 of mankind in the fulfilment of that aim. Havmg 
 accomplished its mission, that religion disappears ; leaving 
 behind the portion of truth it contained, the unknown 
 quantity disengaged by it from its symbol, a new 
 immortal star in humanity's heaveni As the discoveries 
 of science have revealed, and will reveal, star upon star, 
 until our knowledge of the celestial system, of which the 
 milky way is zone, and the earth a part, be complete, so 
 the religious faculties of humanity have added, and will 
 add, faith to faith, until the entire truth we are capable
 
 From the Council to God 323 
 
 of comprehending be complete. Columns of the temple 
 which the generations are building to God, our religions 
 succeed and are linked with one another, sacred and 
 necessary each and all, but having each and all their 
 determinate place and value, according to the portion 
 of the temple they sustain. You who seek to support 
 God's temple on a single column seek the impossible. 
 Could mankind follow you in the insane attempt, column 
 and temple would fall together. 
 
 The world is athirst of God, of progress, and of unity. 
 You substitute for God an idol, an infallible Pope. You 
 oppose to progress the impotent, barren negations of 
 your canons. You impede unity by accepting — on 
 condition that a fraction of the State be preserved to 
 you by force— the dualism between the temporal and 
 spiritual power, represented by the Papacy and monarchy. 
 The hideous idolatry will be answered by God, the 
 destroyer of all idols, past, present, and to come. Your 
 wretched negations will be answered by humanity, which 
 will look upon you, smile, and pass on. The dualism 
 you perpetuate will be answered by the people — the sole 
 power destined to increase— who are hourly acquiring 
 that consciousness of their own strength which alone is 
 needful for their victory. 
 
 The epoch of individuality is exhausted. The epoch 
 of association has begun, and is destined — perhaps 
 through the very Rome you desecrate and profane — to 
 sweep away monarchy and the Papacy together. 
 
 I remember vaguely, while I write, a short poem of 
 Byron's called " Darkness." Amid the ruins of a 
 world expiring in icy cold, two beings alone are left. 
 They also are doomed to perish, but they persist in 
 struggling against the approaching dissolution. Groping 
 amid the darkness, they reach the ashes of an expiring 
 fire, and strive, with all the anguish of one who seeks 
 to prolong existence, if only for a day, to revive it with 
 their breath. When at last they succeed in raising a 
 feeble flame they turn to gaze upon each other, to 
 discover, with rage and terror, that they are enemies ! 
 
 I know not what idea inspired these lines to Byron ;
 
 324 From the Council to God 
 
 but my thoughts, as I recall them, turn involuntarily to 
 you. The last, doomed representatives of a world, 
 from which all life is withdrawn, you. Papacy, and 
 Monarchy, have sought to dominate humanity more 
 surely by dividing it in twain. Conscious of your 
 incapacity of re-uniting it, and yet jealous in your 
 impotent ambition of each other, you have striven to 
 found an impossible alliance between the powers you 
 have disjoined, and from time to time have embraced 
 each other upon the tomb of some once free and 
 dreaded nation ; but hating and despising each other in 
 your hearts, and seeking to injure each other so soon 
 as freed from any imminent danger. Now groping 
 onwards, solitary and suspicious, amid the darkness, and 
 vainly seeking to rekindle the fire irrevocably consumed, 
 you bend your dying gaze upon each other in rage and 
 fear. 
 
 Descend into the tomb you have dug for yourselves. 
 Had you loved, forefelt the future, and adored in time 
 the Spirit of truth announced by Jesus in dying, you 
 might have made of that tomb an altar. It is now too 
 late. The Angel of Death will inscribe upon that tomb 
 the condemnation you have forgotten : 
 
 "And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of 
 Man, it shall be forgiven him : but whosoever speaketh 
 against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, 
 neither in this world, neither in the world to come." 
 — Matt. xii. 32.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 NOTE ON THE REVOLUTION OF 1831 
 
 The Revolution of Central Italy in 1831 was a sequel of the 
 July Revolution in France. The Parisian Carbonari had 
 been industriously connecting the threads of revolution in 
 North and Central Italy. Early in February it broke out 
 in Modena and Bologna, and within a fortnight all but a 
 fraction of the Papal States and the Duchies of Modena and 
 Parma, the mass in fact of Central Italy, with the exception 
 of Tuscany, were in full revolt. The temporal power was 
 abohshed : a National Assembly was decreed ; the Pope 
 was on the point of flight. The Bolognese Government 
 had relied on French promises to protect them against 
 Austrian aggression. One of the formulas of the July 
 Revolution had been, that no nation should be allowed to- 
 interfere in the domestic concerns of another. The French 
 ministers had protested that France would never allow 
 the principle of non-intervention to be violated, and had 
 promised to fight if Austria sent troops into the revolted 
 provinces. At the same time they were sending Metternich 
 private assurances to the contrary, and soon afterwards, 
 throwing off the mask, they declared that " the blood of 
 Frenchmen belongs to France alone." Free from French 
 opposition, the Austrians easily overran Parma and Modena. 
 When the Modenese forces retired into Romagna, the 
 
 325
 
 326 Appendix 
 
 Provisional Government at Bologna, in pedantic observ- 
 ance of the non-intervention formula, still hoping against 
 light that France would insist on its observance by Austria, 
 regarded them as belligerents entering a neutral territory, 
 and disarmed them. " None of our people," they said, 
 " shall take part in our neighbours' quarrels." Their fears 
 gave the lie to their high-sounding phrases of Italian unity 
 and nationality, and took the life out of the struggle. A 
 feeble retreat to Ancona, varied by some spirited fighting 
 on the part of the volunteers at Rimini, was followed by 
 Qomplete surrender, and, though the Revolution broke out 
 again at the end of the year, it was easily suppressed by the 
 Papal troops. 
 
 The revolution has been, perhaps, over-hardly criticised 
 by Mazzini and others. The irresolution and incompetency 
 of its leaders, their pedantic belief in phrases, their in- 
 capacity to guide, admit of no defence. The lawyers and 
 professors who directed it had small experience of public 
 life. They thought they could sway men by maxims, and 
 despised the spiritual forces that are the life-blood of a 
 revolution. And so the people welcomed the revolution, 
 but after the first few days had no enthusiasm for it. They 
 chose their deputies for the Assembly, but were never made 
 to feel their own responsibility and place in the new order. 
 Men who under good leadership would have fought and per- 
 haps conquered found themselves isolated and paralysed, 
 and resigned with hardly a struggle to the old hated rule. 
 And yet it was in advance of the revolutions of Naples and 
 Piedmont ten years before. In some respects it went 
 ahead of popular feeling, and the abolition of the temporal 
 power scandalised the masses outside the great cities. It 
 accentuated, though with a somewhat uncertain voice, the 
 nationaUst bearings of the democratic movement. Italian 
 liberalism too had broadened since 1821. It had spread 
 from the army to the lawyers and tradesmen and artisans. 
 Democracy no longer paraded in military full-dress : it had 
 Taecome bourgeois and unostentatious, and if it lacked
 
 Appendix 327 
 
 capacity and enthusiasm, it had gained in a certain plain 
 solidity. There was a disinterestedness and probity about 
 it that testified to the new spirit. Social reform had been 
 absent from the programmes of the earlier revolutionists ; 
 it had now, pace Mazzini, come to the front, and the first 
 days of freedom had been signalised by a long list of 
 practical improvements in law and taxation and social 
 rights.
 
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