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 ESSAYS: Selected from the 
 Writings, Literary, Political, 
 and Religious, of JOSEPH 
 
 Mazzini. 
 
 /7 fl^ ? ; > ' I &i US 
 
 
 REPUBLISHED BY THE SPECIAL 
 PERMISSION OF MADAME E. A. 
 VENTURI, AND EDITED, WITH AN 
 INTRODUCTION, BY WILLIAM CLARKE 
 
 LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, LTD. 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
 
 The Publisher and Editors of this Volume 
 desire to express their deep gratitude to Madame 
 E. A. VENTURl, for the unreserved permission to 
 make use of the valuable copyright writings of 
 Mazzini here republished.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Faith and the Future . . . . 
 
 Lamennais 
 
 Byron and Goethe 
 
 On the Genius and Tendency of the Writings 
 of Thomas Carlyle 
 
 Carlyle's History of the French Revolution 
 
 On the Minor Works of Dante 
 
 From the Pope to the Council 
 
 Europe : Its Condition and Prospects . 
 
 M. Renan and France 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i 
 
 59 
 83 
 
 109 
 150 
 
 177 
 224 
 261 
 299
 
 MAZZINI, 
 
 ITH the political resurrection of modern Italy 
 four names are associated. The unity of the 
 Italian people was achieved under the kingship 
 of Victor Emmanuel, by the aid of the skilful 
 diplomacy of Cavour, and by means of the 
 sword of the heroic Garibaldi. These men, 
 differing from one another in various ways, had this in common 
 — that they were essentially men of action. But the fourth 
 name is that of one who combined action with thought in his 
 own great and noble personality ; of one who suffered imprison- 
 ment and exile, and who lived to become the prophet and 
 spiritual hero of his nation. But Mazzini is not the prophet of 
 modern Italy alone, but also of the whole modern world. 
 While an ardent patriot and advocate of struggling nationali- 
 ties, no writer or thinker of our century has felt more deeply 
 than he the solidarity of mankind ; and hence he becomes for 
 us a true moral teacher, whose fervent words are as much 
 needed in England, the country of his exile, as in Italy, the 
 land of his birth. In this country there are not a few who owe 
 to the intercourse they enjoyed with Mazzini their insight into 
 the needs of modern life, their faith in progress, and their regard 
 for the people. And it may with safety be affirmed that, apart 
 from the approval or disapproval of specific opinions advocated 
 by Mazzini, no one can be brought into close contact with his 
 mind without being thereby roused to new endeavour or 
 awakened to higher conceptions of human good than he had 
 previously known. Few men could have been more at variance 
 in opinion than Mazzini and Carlyle ; but the tribute rendered
 
 viii MAZZINI. 
 
 spontaneously by the force-worshipping sage of Chelsea to the 
 Italian democratic enthusiast is one of the most pleasing 
 episodes in Carlyle's life. And the impressive scene in Genoa 
 at the unveiling of the Mazzini statue in that city in 1882, when 
 the vast concourse gazed in absolute silence on the features of 
 their great citizen, and then burst forth into transports of 
 enthusiastic joy, proved — if proof were needed — that the new 
 Italy has not forgotten her prophet and liberator. 
 
 Born in Genoa in 1805, Joseph Mazzini was brought up not 
 only in love of country, but also in the " worship of equality " 
 through the democratic principles of his parents, " whose bear- 
 ing towards high or low was ever the same." He tells us that 
 while walking one Sunday in April 1821 with his mother and a 
 friend of the family in the streets of Genoa, they were addressed 
 by " a tall black-bearded man, with a severe and energetic 
 countenance, and a fiery glance that I have never since for- 
 gotten. He held out a white handkerchief towards 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 
 Rini, a captain in the national guard instituted by the Pied- 
 montese in their insurrection against Austria in March 1821. 
 The insurrection was crushed, and many of the revolutionists 
 had flocked to Genoa, there to await another opportunity. From 
 this incident dates the spiritual new birth of Mazzini ; the 
 fruitful idea of struggle for the right, for Italy, for mankind, fall- 
 ing on fertile soil and bearing during the following half century 
 the rich harvest of a sorrowful but inexpressibly precious life. 
 That was the first day that a confused idea presented itself to 
 his mind that "we Italians could and therefore ought \.o struggle 
 for the liberty of our country." This idea continued to take 
 ever stronger possession of his nature. Among the young 
 students of the Genoa University he sat silent and absorbed ; 
 and even childishly determined to dress always in black as in 
 mourning for his country. Gradually a little circle of friends, 
 foremost among whom were the young Ruffinis, gathered 
 around Mazzini ; to them he communicated his thoughts, and to
 
 MAZZIN1. ix 
 
 them he was bound by ties of the strongest affection. Indeed, 
 the subtle blending of keen intellectual enthusiasm with deep 
 human love is perceptible all through the career of this great 
 Italian, whereby he is proclaimed a true compatriot of Dante. 
 
 It was by the study of this great poet, whom he regarded as the 
 prophet of his nation, that Mazzini's national sentiment was 
 deepened into religious enthusiasm ; and it was from the 
 artistic side that Mazzini's patriotic feeling was first kindled. 
 Art is the expression in forms of beauty of a nation's life ; and 
 Mazzini found himself in a land without any art but that of 
 the past, because it had no life but in the past. " It was 
 necessary to interrogate the slumbering, latent, and unconscious 
 life of our people ; to lay the hand upon the half-frozen heart of 
 the nation ; to count its rare pulsations, and reverently learn 
 therefrom the purpose and duty of Italian genius." But Italy 
 had been scornfully described as a " geographical expression ; " 
 while to produce art there must be liberty of development for 
 Italy's own rich life. Mazzini therefore turned resolutely to the 
 political problem — how to gain freedom and unity for Italy — 
 and forthwith joined the secret society of the Carbonari. He 
 was sent by the leaders of this body to Tuscany to plant the 
 order there. Entrapped by an agent provocateur, Mazzini was 
 arrested, the governor of Genoa informing his father that "he 
 was a young man of talent, very fond of solitary walks at night, 
 and habitually silent as to the subject of his meditations, and 
 that the government was not fond of young men of talent, the 
 subject of whose musings was unknown to it." Brutally 
 separated from his father by the military, Mazzini was sent to 
 the fortress of Savona, overlooking the sea on the Western 
 Riviera. Here he remained for some time, the Bible, Tacitus, 
 and Byron being the companions of his solitude. He was 
 acquitted by a committee of senators at Turin ; but not before 
 he had conceived in his solitary cell the design of a new 
 association of Young Italy — a society of young men bound 
 together by a common faith and zeal — for the emancipation of 
 the country. A journey to Switzerland and France followed ; 
 and at Marseilles, whither great numbers of Italian exiles had
 
 x MAZZINL 
 
 flocked, Mazzini sketched out the design and rules of the new 
 society. About this very time (April 1831) Charles Albert, who 
 had been numbered in the ranks of the Carbonari, ascended the 
 Sardinian throne, and many believed that he would achieve the 
 liberty and unity of Italy. Mazzini did not share these views. 
 He did, indeed, in a memorable letter, urge the Sardinian King 
 to put himself at the head of the movement for Italian in- 
 dependence, telling him that he had the choice of being judged 
 by posterity as the greatest of men or the last of Italian tyrants. 
 But no man ever believed so firmly in the divine right of the 
 Republic as did Mazzini. The salvation of Italy, he held, could 
 never be achieved by any monarch, but only through the 
 republican association of the Italian people. Even in 1861 he 
 writes : "All that the Piedmontese monarchy can give us — even 
 if it can give so much — will be an Italy shorn of provinces which 
 ever were, are, and will be, Italian, though yielded up to foreign 
 domination in payment of the services rendered ; an Italy, the 
 abject slave of French policy, dishonoured by her alliance with 
 despotism ; weak, corrupted, and disinherited of all moral 
 mission, and bearing within her the germs of provincial autonomy 
 and civil war." Italian provinces are indeed held by France 
 and by Austria to-day, nor is Italy yet free from tendencies to 
 separatism ; while her present statesmen appear to be more 
 concerned in the making of guns and ironclads and the acquisi- 
 tion of territory in Africa than in carrying out any " moral 
 mission." But it must be admitted that, so far as appears (and 
 this is the judgment of so competent an observer as M. de 
 Laveleye), there is no very marked feeling for the Republic 
 beloved by Mazzini ; while in Italy, as in every other country, 
 the social question at present eclipses the purely political. 
 
 Mazzini's republican ideal was, however, no mere political 
 mechanism, but an organic union, the life of which was a 
 religious faith. Mazzini found Italy utilitarian and materialist, 
 permeated by French ideas, and weakened by her reliance on 
 French initiative. He was filled with hope that Italy might not 
 only achieve her own unity, but might once more accomplish, as 
 she had in the Rome of the Csesars and the Rome of the Church,
 
 MAZZINI. xi 
 
 the unity of the Western world. "On my side I believed/' he 
 says, " that the great problem of the day was a religious 
 problem, to which all other questions were but secondary." The 
 Italians were to be convinced that their " sole path to victory 
 was through sacrifice — constancy in sacrifice.'' Instead, there- 
 fore, of the old wire-pulling mechanism of Carbonarism, we 
 have, as the exponent of these ideas, the association of Young 
 Italy, filled with the breath of the new life. In the general 
 instructions for the members of Young Italy Mazzini gives the 
 reasons for his republican creed. Young Italy is republican, 
 he says, because every nation should form a free and equal 
 community of brothers ; because all true sovereignty resides in 
 the nation ; because privilege tends to undermine the equality 
 of the citizens, and therefore to endanger the liberty of the 
 country ; because the Republic closes the path, otherwise open, 
 to usurpation ; because monarchy involves the intermediate 
 element of an aristocracy, which is a source of inequality and 
 corruption ; because monarchy, which cannot now be based on 
 the extinct belief of divine right, has become too weak a bond of 
 unity and authority ; because there are no monarchical elements 
 in Italy ; because Italian tradition is essentially republican ; 
 because monarchy would drag Italy into concessions to foreign 
 courts, trust in and respect for diplomacy, and repression of the 
 popular element ; because the recent Italian movements had all 
 been in essence republican ; and because the idea of the 
 Republic, dominating every European revolutionary manifesta- 
 tion, appealed to the sympathy and imagination of the Italian 
 people. 
 
 Never existed greater devotion to a cause than was displayed 
 by the leading members of Young Italy. " I never saw," said 
 Mazzini, "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 were, Lamberti, Usiglio, Lustrini, G. B. Ruffini, 
 and five or six others, almost all Modenese ; alone, without any 
 office, without subalterns, immersed in labour the whole of the 
 day, and the greater part of the night ; writing articles and
 
 xii MAZZINI. 
 
 letters, seeing travellers, affiliating the Italian sailors, folding 
 our printed articles, tying up bundles, alternating between 
 intellectual labour and the routine of working men." Thus was 
 the faith of the new Italian apostolate exemplified in its works. 
 In the journal Young Italy appeared at the end of 1831 the 
 manifesto of the new party, written by Mazzini himself. It was 
 an eloquent appeal, written under the influence of the nascent 
 romanticism of the time, fervid and passionate ; too florid 
 indeed for the taste of our colder and more critical period. 
 Through it the regeneration of Italy was presented to the young 
 Italian mind as an object of religious enthusiasm, to help 
 forward which young Italy " has need of purification from every 
 servile habit, from every unworthy affection." In order to 
 differentiate the new movement from Carbonarism, which had 
 been individualistic, founded on calculations of material interest, 
 and given to compromise, it was now shown that Association 
 was the new watchword. " Revolutions must be made by the 
 people and for the people. This is our Word ; it sums up our 
 whole doctrine ; it is our science, our religion, our heart's 
 affection." No longer can any great human movement be 
 based on a theory of individualism ; the epoch of collective 
 action has arrived, and the national organism must be pene- 
 trated with a conscious sense of its mission. This manifesto 
 was followed by other writings from Mazzini, including "Thoughts 
 Addressed to the Poets of the 19th Century," " On the Brother- 
 hood of the Peoples," " The Alliance of the French and German 
 Peoples," and " Young Italy to the People of Germany and the 
 Liberals of France." In August 1832 Mazzini was decreed 
 exiled from France. But it was easier to publish the decree 
 than to enforce it. The spies who served a French prefect were 
 willing to serve the outlaw also ; and thus it came to pass that 
 he sent to Geneva a friend who bore a close personal resem- 
 blance to himself, whilst he " walked quietly through the whole 
 row of police-officers, dressed in the uniform of a national 
 guard," and was able to remain a whole year in Marseilles, 
 writing, correcting proofs, corresponding, and holding secret 
 interviews. Thus was developed in Mazzini, under the educating
 
 MAZZ±-,1. xiii 
 
 compulsion of threatened despotism, that " cat-like footfall," as 
 a writer has called it, which "never betrayed him to Europe, 
 while he passed untouched through her highways and byways as 
 often as he listed, like the very wraith and spirit of Republicanism 
 that he was." 
 
 The Association of Young Italy was soon to experience the 
 fate reserved for those who raise the standard of insurrection 
 against organised wrong. Mazzini himself had conceived the 
 idea of a national revolution through the insurrection of the 
 Sardinian States ; Genoa and Alessandria being the two centres 
 of the movement. But owing to the accident of a quarrel 
 between two artillerymen the government was enabled to trace 
 the secret of the conspiracy, and very soon wholesale arrests 
 took place. Ferocious terrorism and artful designs were re- 
 sorted to by the government. Some of the prisoners were 
 made to believe, by forged signatures, that their own friends 
 had denounced them. In other cases a pretended conspirator 
 was placed in the same cell with a prisoner to worm his secret 
 from him. An infusion was mixed with the drinking water of 
 some prisoners to weaken the intellectual faculties. Beneath 
 the window of a prisoner's cell the public crier would announce 
 the execution of his friend. Mazzini's dearest friend, Jacopo 
 Ruffini, whom he describes as " a youth of the sweetest nature, 
 the purest and most constant affections I have ever known," 
 tore one night a nail from the door of his prison, and opened a 
 vein in his neck. " With this last protest against tyranny, he 
 took refuge in the bosom of his Creator." Ultimately several 
 were executed, others imprisoned for a term of years, while 
 some managed to escape. Mazzini himself was among those 
 condemned to death. Thus ended the first attempt of Young 
 Italy. 
 
 Bui action was the motto of the insurgents, and a new attempt 
 was shortly after determined on. Mazzini proceeded to Geneva, 
 where he helped to set on foot a new journal, called U Europe 
 Centrale, and where he determined to operate on Savoy. Into 
 the history of the abortive expedition there it is impossible, for 
 reasons of space, to enter. Suffice it to say that, contrary to
 
 xiv MAZZINI. 
 
 Mazzini's advice, the expedition was placed under the direction 
 of General Ramorino, who had been sent to Warsaw during the 
 Polish insurrection by the Parisian Committee of the Friends of 
 Poland. Delay ensued, want of confidence, exhaustion of funds, 
 and finally betrayal by Ramorino. " The first period of Young 
 Italy was concluded, and concluded with a defeat." The Italian 
 exiles were dealt severely with by the governments under whose 
 jurisdiction they were; others escaped, many going to Switzer- 
 land. Mazzini and three of his friends lay concealed for some 
 time in Lausanne, but ultimately took up their abode in Berne, 
 sad, poverty-stricken, exiled from friends and home, but devoted 
 to a great ideal. " They were the infants of a new world, the 
 children of a new faith. . . . They saw nations regenerated, 
 and races long divided advancing together in brotherhood, con- 
 fidence, and joy, while the Angel of Liberty, Equality, and 
 Humanity spread his white wings above them." On the 15th 
 April 1834, eighteen of the Berne exiles, Poles, Italians, and 
 Germans, constituted a pact of fraternity, and founded the 
 association of Young Europe, the mission of which was declared 
 to be the constitution of mankind in such a manner "as to en- 
 able it through a continuous progress to discover and apply the 
 law of God by which it should be governed, as speedily as pos- 
 sible." No true association, it is declared, is possible save 
 among free men and equals ; therefore the union of republican 
 nationalities is the thing to be striven for. " All privilege is a 
 violation of equality. All arbitrary rule is a violation of liberty. 
 Every act of egotism is a violation of fraternity." Towards the 
 end of the same year Mazzini founded the association of Young 
 Switzerland, and in June 1835 a journal for extending its ideas, 
 entitled La Jenne Suisse. But the European governments 
 were keeping close watch over the exiles in Switzerland, and in 
 July 1836 one Auguste Conseil was despatched by the French 
 government to Berne to obtain their confidence, discover their 
 secrets, and then of course betray them. The Swiss govern- 
 ment was weak and timid ; and when, in September 1S36, 
 France suspended diplomatic relations with Switzerland, the 
 Swiss authorities yielded, and Mazzini was condemned to
 
 MAZZINI. xv 
 
 perpetual exile from the Swiss Republic. He shrugged his 
 shoulders, he says, and remained till December, searched for in 
 vain on every side ; but then, owing to the state of health of the 
 two friends who shared his trials,he left, and in January 1837 came 
 to London. The "hell of exile" was never so dreary to Mazzini 
 as during his first few months in the English capital. He was 
 in a condition of the deepest poverty. " I struggled on," he 
 says, " in silence. I pledged, without the possibility of redeem- 
 ing them, the few dear souvenirs, either of my mother or others, 
 which I possessed ; then things of less value ; until one Satur- 
 day I found myself obliged to carry an old coat and a pair of 
 boots to one of the pawnbroker's shops, crowded on Saturday 
 evenings by the poor and fallen, in order to obtain food for the 
 Sunday. After this some of my fellow-countrymen became 
 security for me, and I dragged myself from one to another of 
 those loan societies which drain the poor man of the last drop 
 of blood, and often rob him of the last remnant of shame and 
 dignity, by exacting from him forty or fifty per cent, upon a few 
 pounds, which he is compelled to pay back in weekly payments, 
 at certain fixed hours, in offices held in public houses, or gin 
 and beer shops, among crowds of the drunken and dissolute." 
 But besides this terrible physical distress, Mazzini's soul was 
 haunted at this time by the spectre of an awful doubt. Had he 
 done right in leading others to sacrifice their fortunes and theii 
 lives for an Idea? "I felt myself a criminal — conscious of guilt, 
 yet incapable of expiation. The forms of those shot at Ales- 
 sandria and Chambery rose up before me like the phantoms of 
 a crime and its unvailing 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 !" Had this terrible state of mind lasted 
 much longer, Mazzini tells us he must either have gone mad or 
 died the death of a suicide. But he examined himself, and 
 assured his mind of the purity of its purpose. He examined his 
 cause, and satisfied himself that it was just. And so he
 
 \-vi MAZZINI. 
 
 recovered his mental balance and serenity of soul. " Life," he 
 proclaims, "is a mission. Every other definition of life is false, 
 and leads all who accept it astray." When we clearly perceive 
 that our action is in accord with the highest commands, and is 
 dedicated to universal aims, the inevitable strife — the " bridal 
 dawn of thunder-peals wherever thought hath wedded fact" — 
 does not disturb our inward calm. We are the soldiers of an 
 Idea, and that is the warrant of our action. "Think ye I am 
 come to bring peace on the earth ? I am not come to bring 
 peace, but a sword." Mazzini, therefore, perceiving the purpose 
 of our life, and conscious of the grandeur and unselfishness of 
 his aims, found peace, and the black clouds of doubt fled away. 
 Supporting himself by his pen, and devoting no small part 
 of his time and energies to the help and education of his poor 
 and unhappy fellow-countrymen in London, Mazzini toiled on, 
 noting every European movement, and with his mind fixed 
 permanently on the Italian problem. It was during this time 
 that several of his most important essays were produced — 
 those on Lamennais and on Byron and Goethe in 1839, the two on 
 Carlyle in 1843, an d tnat on tne minor works of Dante in 1844. 
 The two essays on Carlyle — one on the " Genius and Tendency 
 of the Writings of Thomas Carlyle," and the other on Carlyle's 
 "French Revolution" — are of especial value, and contain criticism 
 marked by deep insight as well as strong sympathy. All that 
 Carlyle combats, says Mazzini, " is indeed really false, and has 
 never been combated more energetically ; that which he 
 teaches is not always true. His aspirations belong to the future 
 — the temper and habits of his intelligence attach him to the 
 past. My sympathies may claim the one-half of the man, — the 
 other half escapes me." The chief source of Carlyle's weakness 
 is discerned in his individualism. With Carlyle the single soul 
 bows prostrate before the Supreme Power, with whom it can 
 enter into no relations and in whose sight it is nothing. The 
 collective life of mankind is ignored, and the majority of men 
 are despised. Hence arise hero-worships, strong rulers, and 
 " saviours of society." Carlyle is a veritable John the Baptist, 
 calling from the wilderness of modern life on the individual to
 
 MAZZTNI. xvii 
 
 repent, and to do "the task that lies nearest to him." That is 
 a great and needful mission, as Mazzini admitted ; and how 
 nobly Carlyle discharged that mission we all know. But it is 
 not the highest mission for our age. We cannot relate ourselves 
 to the Divine, says Mazzini, but through collective humanity. 
 It is not by isolated duty (which indeed the conditions of modern 
 life render more and more impossible), nor by contemplation of 
 mere Power as displayed in the material world, that we can 
 develop our nature. It is rather by mingling with the 
 universal life, and by carrying on the evolution of the never- 
 ending work. "Annihilate the connecting-link between all 
 human lives ; efface the infallibility involved in the idea of 
 progression, of collective mankind, and what is martyrdom but 
 a suicide without an object ? . . . Sadness, unending sadness, 
 discordance between the will and the power, disenchantment, 
 discouragement,— such is human life, when looked at only from 
 the individual point of view/' " Mr. Carlyle comprehends 
 only the individual ; the true sense of the unity of the human 
 race escapes him. He sympathises with all men, but it is with 
 the separate life of each, and not with their collective life/' 
 Thus it is that Carlyle, spite of his great powers, his noble 
 genius, and his fruitful thoughts, cannot be, in any high sense, 
 the prophet of democracy ; for no man, however great, can be the 
 inspirer of an epoch whose ruling idea he does not comprehend. 
 This powerful criticism dealt with the work of one who was 
 no stranger to Mazzini. The two men had met, and, spite of 
 differences, had learned to know each other's worth. When the 
 English government stooped to act the part of spy and informer 
 for Austria by opening Mazzini's letters, and by traducing, 
 through the mouth of one of its leading men, Mazzini's char- 
 acter, Carlyle testified in a letter to the Times (June 15, 1844) 
 his regard for the persecuted Italian exile—" 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 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 
 
 b
 
 xviii MAZZTNI. 
 
 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 falsehoods of Lord Aberdeen and the 
 calumnies (afterwards apologised for) of Si- James Graham did 
 not increase Mazzini's respect for the Eiiglish government, 
 which he regarded as " founded on the absurd privilege of 
 hereditary power, and maintained by such empty formula? as, 
 The head of the state reigns, but does not govern." Such 
 fictions he regarded as bearing a "radical vice of artificiality or 
 immorality," and as leading to a constant state of antagonism 
 between "a small and privileged fraction of society "and the 
 great body of the people. But while disliking the government, 
 Mazzini had a great regard for the English people, among whom 
 he found many dear friends and co-workers in the great cause 
 he had so deeply at heart. 
 
 Meanwhile the Italian movement was passing into the hands 
 of parties and sects with which Mazzini had no sympathy. 
 Compromise, materialism, and an almost superstitious belief in 
 the French initiative — all three particularly abhorrent to 
 Mazzini — had produced a great party of so-called Moderates, 
 who put their faith in diplomacy, and some of whom trusted in 
 Pius IX. — a confidence which was soon to be rudely shaken, 
 though it may well be believed that that pontiff started with a 
 fair stock of good intentions. But the year of revolutions — 1848 
 — arrived ; and with it arrived insurrection in Italy. The 
 sword was unsheathed by the people in Sicily and in Venetian- 
 Lombardy, and a war committee sat at Milan. Mazzini's idea 
 was that an insurrectional government should be established, 
 which should unite the Venetian and Lombard elements, and 
 thus form the nucleus of a United Italy. With this 
 hope he hastened to his native land, speaking first at Brescia, 
 and then proceeding to Milan. Manin held Venice, and Mazzini 
 advised that Italy should rally round the Venetian flag. But 
 again failure ensued, and the republican movement in 
 Lombardy collapsed ; no work was left there for Mazzini, whc 
 went by way of France to Tuscany. In the meantime the Pope
 
 MAZZ1NI. xix 
 
 had fled from Rome, which had thus become a free city. 
 Mazzini determined to proceed thither, and in " the city of the 
 soul " to establish the Republic, which was duly proclaimed on 
 the 9th of February 1849. A provisional government had been 
 appointed, which for two months had conducted the administra- 
 tion. This body appealed to universal suffrage to elect a 
 Constituent Assembly of one hundred and fifty members, which, 
 on the date mentioned, declared the secular Papacy abolished 
 and the Republic established. " Rome," says Mazzini, " was the 
 dream of my young years ; the generating idea of my mental 
 conception ; the keystone of my intellectual edifice, the religion 
 of my soul ; and I entered the city one evening, early in March, 
 with a deep sense of awe, almost of worship. Rome was to me, 
 as in spite of her present degradation she still is, the temple 
 of Humanity." On the iSth of March a committee of 
 war was chosen by the Assembly, on the proposition of 
 Mazzini ; an army of 45,000 was planned, and it was deter- 
 mined to send 10,000 men to aid Piedmont. But after the 
 battle of Novara, by which the Piedmontese monarchy con- 
 sented to what Mazzini designated her " sin and shame," a trium- 
 virate was formed in Rome ; Mazzini, Aurelio Saffi, and 
 Armellini being the triumvirs. The brief history of the 
 glorious Roman Republic and its cruel destruction at the hands 
 of a sister republic are well known. On the 25th of April the 
 French troops landed at Civita Vecchia, and the citizens decided 
 to defend their cause, and, if needful, to die for it. The invasion 
 of Rome was, as Mazzini says, the design of Louis Napoleon, 
 who was meditating his tyranny at home, was desirous of gain- 
 ing the support of the Church, and of accustoming the soldiery 
 to fire on the republican flag. On May 7th the French 
 Assembly desired the French government to empower M. 
 Lesseps, their envoy, to come to terms with the Roman 
 Republic. A treaty was made towards the end of May, by 
 which an alliance was established between the Republic and 
 France, by which the French army was to defend Rome in case 
 of invasion. But this treaty the French general Oudinot 
 refused to recognise, the French made themselves masters
 
 xx MAZZ1NI. 
 
 of the heights round the city, and the siege began which ended 
 with the overthrow of the Republic and the entry of the French 
 troops into the city. Mazzini was the life and soul of the 
 defence : surrounded by the wounded and the dying, his one 
 fixed idea was the preservation of an unstained flag, the Roman 
 banner on which was inscribed " God and the People," which 
 might become the flag of a regenerated and united country 
 under the lead of Rome. But he came forth from the siege an 
 old and broken man so far as his bodily powers were concerned. 
 Margaret Fuller, whose noble efforts for the wounded during 
 the siege gained for her Mazzini's affectionate regard, thus 
 describes him as he then appeared :— " Mazzini had suffered 
 millions more than I could ; he had borne his fearful 
 responsibility ; he had let his dearest friends perish ; he had 
 passed all these nights without sleep ; in two short months he 
 had grown old ; all the vital juices seemed exhausted ; his eyes 
 were all bloodshot ; his skin orange ; flesh he had none ; his 
 hair was mixed with white ; his hand was painful to the touch ; but 
 he had never flinched, never quailed ; had protested in the last 
 hour against surrender : 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." 
 
 The Republic had fallen, the Vicar of Christ relumed to 
 Rome under the protection of French bayonets, and Mazzini 
 went to Switzerland, and afterwards to England. The more 
 active part of his life was over, though he personally assisted in 
 the abortive insurrection of 1857, and strongly opposed the 
 alliance of the Sardinians with the French Emperor in 1859. 
 This was the work of the diplomatic Cavour, and Mazzini did 
 not believe in the salvation of Italy through diplomacy. We 
 know, as a matter of fact, that Italy paid, as the price of this 
 alliance, Savoy and Nice. United Italy, as Mazzini understood 
 it, does not yet exist ; in its place there is a truncated Italy of 
 monarchy and diplomacy, the creation of Victor Emmanuel, 
 Louis Napoleon, and Cavour. Still, that is better than the 
 " geographical expression " of Metternich ; for the Italian has 
 now a country, he has dignity and substantial political freedom.
 
 MAZZINI. xxi 
 
 But he has also, alas, at the same time, huge armaments and 
 terrible poverty. The unity of Italy under a king of the house 
 of Savoy was largely aided by Garibaldi. He had, assisted by 
 Mazzini, carried to a successful issue the insurrection in Sicily, 
 and had become dictator of Central Italy. While Mazzini was 
 urging an advance on Rome, and a movement against Austria 
 in Venice, Garibaldi, on the other hand, transferred his conquests 
 to Victor Emmanuel, whose monarchy was thus consolidated. 
 The union of Rome with Italy was delayed until the fall of the 
 French Empire. On the 20th September 1870 the Italian 
 troops entered the city, and the temporal power of the Papacy 
 ended. 
 
 During this period Mazzini watched carefully all the political 
 and social phenomena, and produced some of his most important 
 writings. An essay on "Europe : its Condition and Prospects,'' 
 appeared in the Westminister Review in. 1852, and the greater 
 part of " The Duties of Man" in 1S58. The " Thoughts upon 
 Democracy in Europe" had appeared in 1847 in the People's 
 Journal. Since two cheap and convenient editions of these 
 latter essays have been given to the public within the last few 
 years, they are not included in the present volume, although 
 they contain perhaps the most important and characteristic 
 utterances of Mazzini's thought. In all these essays Mazzini 
 gives to his readers his root ideas. Society conceived as a 
 whole, the thought of collective mankind, composed of free 
 nationalities, life conceived as a mission, duty regarded as the 
 fulfilment of a divine law and as being precedent to individual 
 rights, the union of thought and action, faiih shown through 
 works, conscience and tradition the criteria of truth — these are 
 the main ideas herein taught. 
 
 No portion of Mazzini's teaching is more important than his 
 criticism of the ideas summed up in the French Revolution. 
 Mazzini regarded that event as the close, not the opening, of an 
 epoch — the epoch of individual rights, which, after a period of 
 chaos, was to be succeeded by the epoch of association, oi 
 collective life. The Revolution finally conquered for man those 
 rights of the individual contended for by the Protestant
 
 xxii MAZZINL 
 
 Reformation, but it necessarily ends, according to Mazzini, in 
 despotism. " When Napoleon, the most powerful individual 
 of that period, arose, and, relying upon force, said Yield — the 
 revolution gave way before him, and with the exception of a 
 very few, all these men who had sworn to die, or live free, held 
 their tongues, and giving in, sat upon the benches of the 
 conservative senate, or upon the benches of the Institute." IIas ) 
 then, this individualism done no good work ? Yes ; it is powerful 
 to destroy, and it has burnt up shams and lies not a few. But 
 Mazzini contends that it cannot create ; the new birth can only 
 proceed from the collective life. With Association goes Duty. 
 The individual has hitherto struggled for his rights ; he will 
 now co-operate with his nation in the fulfilment of its mission, 
 with the world in its development of the eternal law of progress. 
 This law is regarded as the unfolding of the Divine will in 
 which, as Mazzini's countryman Dante said, is man's peace. 
 " The absence of a highest form of Duty, universally accepted, 
 to which every one can appeal, little by little and imperceptibly 
 accustoms people's minds to submission to accomplished facts: 
 success becomes the sign of right, and what is done takes the 
 place, in men's worship, of Truth." From this it may be seen 
 that Mazzini is wholly opposed to the doctrine that man acts 
 from mere considerations of self-interest. This doctrine, as- 
 sumed by most economists and politicians as self-evident, but 
 which is visibly losing its hold under the influence of moral 
 teachers like Ruskin, is condemned by Mazzini as resulting in 
 the despotism of authority when starting from the collective 
 point of view, and " in the anarchy of animal propensities " 
 when adopted from the individual point of view. In no case 
 can it afford a foundation for any true society. " No, certainly," 
 he writes, " it was not to attain the ignoble and immoral every 
 one for himselj "that so many great men, holy martyrs of thought, 
 have shed, from epoch to epoch, from century to century, the 
 tears of the soul, the sweat and blood of the body. Beings of 
 devotedness and love, they laboured and suffered for something 
 higher than the individual ; for that Humanity which ought to 
 be the object of all our efforts, and to which we are all
 
 MAZZINI. xxiii 
 
 responsible. Before a generation which scorned or persecuted 
 them, they calmly uttered their prophetic thoughts, with an eye 
 fixed on the horizon of future times ; speaking to that collective 
 being which ever lives, which ever learns, and in which the 
 divine idea is progressively realised ; for that city of the human 
 race, which alone, by the association of all intellects, of all loves, 
 and of all forces, can accomplish the providential design that 
 presided over our creation here below." 
 
 Mazzini's lofty idealism, his religious spirit, and his constant 
 insistence on duty rather than on rights, frequently brought him 
 into antagonism with many of the revolutionists of Europe, who, 
 while they applauded his struggle for Italy, were by no means 
 animated by the same motives which controlled him. Foremost 
 among these was the famous Russian anarchist, Bakounine 
 who, from an atheistic standpoint, criticised severely the 
 theological politics of Mazzini. Yet Bakounine, while opposing 
 the thinker, admired the man. " If there is a man," he says 
 in his pamphlet (written in 1S71) " La Theologie politique de 
 Mazzini et l'lnternationale," "universally respected in Europe, 
 and who, during forty years of activity, uniquely devoted to the 
 service of a great cause, has really merited this respect, it is 
 Mazzini. He is incontestably one of the noblest and purest 
 individualities of our age." Bakounine, like Mazzini, believed in 
 association, but his conception of solidarity was very different 
 from that of Mazzini. " The human species, 1 ' says this Russian 
 thinker, " like all other animal species, has inherent principles 
 which are peculiarly its own, and all these principles sum them- 
 selves up, or reduce themselves, to a single principle which we 
 call solidarity." This is a frank statement of the naturalistic 
 view of man, who is thus regarded as one term of a series of 
 phenomena, and whose desire for union is nothing more than a 
 superior form of the gregarious instinct. This is very different 
 from Mazzini's spiritual union, " his city of the human race," 
 outside time and space. 
 
 Equally decisive was Mazzini's opposition to the older French 
 Communism as preached by Proudhon, Fourier, and Enfantin. 
 These doctrines were based, according to Mazzini, on the old
 
 xxiv MAZZ1NI. 
 
 and false notions of the rights and the personal gratification of 
 the desires of the Ego ; and if carried into practice, would lead 
 either to despotism or anarchy. His attitude towards our 
 current socialism would probably be somewhat different, for 
 that is historical, and is connected with those democratic forms 
 which he thought essential, and which were ignored by the 
 older French Communists. Many Socialists appear to regard 
 Mazzini as mainly interested in the mere political as dis- 
 tinguished from the social question. But this is hardly borne 
 out by his writings, which contain a powerful diagnosis of the 
 present social conditions. Thus he writes — " And as it is 
 impossible to dream of the moral and intellectual progress of 
 the people without providing for its physical amelioration — as 
 it is absurd to say ' Instruct yourself] to a man who is working for 
 his daily bread from fourteen to sixteen hours a-day, or to tell 
 him to love who sees nothing around him but the cold calcula- 
 tions of the speculator and the tyranny of the capitalist legislator 
 — the social question was found inevitably grafted upon the 
 question of political progress. Henceforward they could only 
 be separated by destroying both." And again in the " Duties of 
 Man " — " At the present day — and this is the curse of our actual 
 social economy — capital is the tyrant of labour." His economical 
 ideal is thus defined— "Association — but to be administered 
 with a truly republican fraternity by your own delegates, and 
 from which you should be free to withdraw at your own discre- 
 tion." There is no fundamental divergence between this 
 teaching and that of the present day advocates of Socialism, 
 But it may be admitted that Mazzini was not a great economist ; 
 and that his revolt against the present conditions of labour was 
 rather of the heart than of the head, and that he did jiot fully 
 perceive how those very conditions force on a class struggle 
 even in republican communities like the United States. But if 
 he did not fully grasp the economical problem, at least Mazzini 
 did not pretend, like so many, that that problem is to be solved 
 by the preaching of morality. No doubt the problem of society 
 is fundamentally a moral one ; but then morality is not a 
 metaphysical entity existing outside the real world. It is the
 
 MAZZINL xxv 
 
 expression of a harmonious condition of the individual and 
 society in the actual world. And the charge brought against 
 present economic arrangements is two-fold : — First, that they 
 violate justice by depriving a portion of society of the full result 
 of its labour ; and second, that the physical and social condi- 
 tions under which that portion lives prevent its members from 
 properly developing their faculties, i.e., prevent them from living 
 a truly moral life. If these charges can be sustained, it is 
 evident that the economic problem cannot possibly be separated 
 from the moral problem. And this was undoubtedly Mazzini's 
 view. His objection to a good deal of the Socialist teaching 
 was, that it regarded the social problem as a merely economical 
 question ; whereas it is truly a human problem of which the 
 economical question is only one factor, however important that 
 factor may be. He thus states the problem in his essay on 
 "The War and the Commune" — ''The immediate aim of 
 humanity is the harmonious development of all its faculties and 
 forces towards the discovery and fulfilment of the moral law." 
 The fulfilment of that law obviously involves justice in the 
 economic relations of society ; and just as obviously does it 
 involve conditions favourable to the growth of every man's moral 
 nature. For men cannot develop their characters in the air, but 
 only in the real world of family life, of property, and of 
 institutions. 
 
 The latter years of Mazzini's life were spent in London, where 
 he had now many friends. His health was broken and his body 
 weak. " Physically," says Mr. Garrison the American Aboli- 
 tionist, who visited him in 1867, "he was greatly attenuated, 
 stricken in countenance, broken in health, and evidently near 
 the close of his earthly pilgrimage." But his mind was active 
 as ever, his spirit resolute and strong. " In private society," 
 says Professor Masson, " Mazzini's habits were simple, kindly, 
 affectionate, and sometimes even playful. He had a good deal 
 of humour, and could tell a story or hit off a character very 
 shrewdly and graphically, not omitting the grotesque points." 
 He was ready to talk under favourable circumstances, and his 
 talk "on such occasions was good, utterly unpedantic, about
 
 x-vi MAZZINl. 
 
 recovered his mental balance and serenity of soul. " Life," he 
 proclaims, " is a mission. Every other definition of life is false, 
 and leads all who accept it astray." When we clearly perceive 
 that our action is in accord with the highest commands, and is 
 dedicated to universal aims, the inevitable strife — the " bridal 
 dawn of thunder-peals wherever thought hath wedded fact" — 
 does not disturb our inward calm. We are the soldiers of an 
 Idea, and that is the warrant of our action. "Think ye I am 
 come to bring peace on the earth ? I am not come to bring 
 peace, but a sword." Mazzini, therefore, perceiving the purpose 
 of our life, and conscious of the grandeur and unselfishness of 
 his aims, found peace, and the black clouds of doubt fled away. 
 Supporting himself by his pen, and devoting no small part 
 of his time and energies to the help and education of his poor 
 and unhappy fellow-countrymen in London, Mazzini toiled on, 
 noting every European movement, and with his mind fixed 
 permanently on the Italian problem. It was during this time 
 that several of his most important essays were produced — 
 those on Lamennais and on Byron and Goethe in 1839, the two on 
 Carlyle in 1843, an d tnat on tne minor works of Dante in 1844. 
 The two essays on Carlyle — one on the " Genius and Tendency 
 of the Writings of Thomas Carlyle," and the other on Carlyle's 
 " French Revolution" — are of especial value, and contain criticism 
 marked by deep insight as well as strong sympathy. All that 
 Carlyle combats, says Mazzini, " is indeed really false, and has 
 never been combated more energetically ; that which he 
 teaches is not always true. His aspirations belong to the future 
 — the temper and habits of his intelligence attach him to the 
 past. My sympathies may claim the one-half of the man, — the 
 other half escapes me." The chief source of Carlyle's weakness 
 is discerned in his individualism. With Carlyle the single soul 
 bows prostrate before the Supreme Power, with whom it can 
 enter into no relations and in whose sight it is nothing. The 
 collective life of mankind is ignored, and the majority of men 
 are despised. Hence arise hero-worships, strong rulers, and 
 " saviours of society." Carlyle is a veritable John the Baptist, 
 calling from the wilderness of modern life on the individual to
 
 MAZZTNI. xvii 
 
 repent, and to do "the task that lies nearest to him." That is 
 a great and needful mission, as Mazzini admitted ; and how 
 nobly Carlyle discharged that mission we all know. But it is 
 not the highest mission for our age. We cannot relate ourselves 
 to the Divine, says Mazzini, but through collective humanity. 
 It is not by isolated duty (which indeed the conditions of modern 
 life render more and more impossible), nor by contemplation of 
 mere Power as displayed in the material world, that we can 
 develop our nature. It is rather by mingling with the 
 universal life, and by carrying on the evolution of the never- 
 ending work. "Annihilate the connecting-link between all 
 human lives ; efface the infallibility involved in the idea of 
 progression, of collective mankind, and what is martyrdom but 
 a suicide without an object ? . . . Sadness, unending sadness, 
 discordance between the will and the power, disenchantment, 
 discouragement, — such is human life, when looked at only from 
 the individual point of view. 1 ' " Mr. Carlyle comprehends 
 only the individual ; the true sense of the unity of the human 
 race escapes him. He sympathises with all men, but it is with 
 the separate life of each, and not with their collective life." 
 Thus it is that Carlyle, spite of his great powers, his noble 
 genius, and his fruitful thoughts, cannot be, in any high sense, 
 the prophet of democracy ; for no man, however great, can be the 
 inspirer of an epoch whose ruling idea he does not comprehend. 
 This powerful criticism dealt with the work of one who was 
 no stranger to Mazzini. The two men had met, and, spite of 
 differences, had learned to know each other's worth. When the 
 English government stooped to act the part of spy and informer 
 for Austria by opening Mazzini's letters, and by traducing, 
 through the mouth of one of its leading men, Mazzini's char- 
 acter, Carlyle testified in a letter to the Times (June 15, 1844) 
 his regard for the persecuted Italian exile — " 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 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
 
 xviii MAZZINT. 
 
 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 falsehoods of Lord Aberdeen and the 
 calumnies (afterwards apologised for) of Si- James Graham did 
 not increase Mazzini's respect for the English government, 
 which he regarded as " founded on the absurd privilege of 
 hereditary power, and maintained by such empty formulas as, 
 The head of the state reigns, but does not govern." Such 
 fictions he regarded as bearing a "radical vice of artificiality or 
 immorality," and as leading to a constant state of antagonism 
 between "a small and privileged fraction of society " and the 
 great body of the people. But while disliking the government, 
 Mazzini had a great regard for the English people, among whom 
 he found many dear friends and co-workers in the great cause 
 he had so deeply at heart. 
 
 Meanwhile the Italian movement was passing into the hands 
 of parties and sects with which Mazzini had no sympathy. 
 Compromise, materialism, and an almost superstitious belief in 
 the French initiative — all three particularly abhorrent to 
 Mazzini — had produced a great party of so-called Moderates, 
 who put their faith in diplomacy, and some of whom trusted in 
 Pius IX. — a confidence which was soon to be rudely shaken, 
 though it may well be believed that that pontiff started with a 
 fair stock of good intentions. But the year of revolutions — 1848 
 — arrived ; and with it arrived insurrection in Italy. The 
 sword was unsheathed by the people in Sicily and in Venetian- 
 Lombardy, and a war committee sat at Milan. Mazzini's idea 
 was that an insurrectional government should be established, 
 which should unite the Venetian and Lombard elements, and 
 thus form the nucleus of a United Italy. With this 
 hope he hastened to his native land, speaking first at Brescia, 
 and then proceeding to Milan. Manin held Venice, and Mazzini 
 advised that Italy should rally round the Venetian flag. But 
 again failure ensued, and the republican movement in 
 Lombardy collapsed ; no work was left there for Mazzini, whc 
 went by way of France to Tuscany. In the meantime the Pope
 
 MAZZINI. xix 
 
 had fled from Rome, which had thus become a free city. 
 Mazzini determined to proceed thither, and in " the city of the 
 soul " to establish the Republic, which was duly proclaimed on 
 the 9th of February 1849. A provisional government had been 
 appointed, which for two months had conducted the administra- 
 tion. This body appealed to universal suffrage to elect a 
 Constituent Assembly of one hundred and fifty members, which, 
 on the date mentioned, declared the secular Papacy abolished 
 and the Republic established. " Rome," says Mazzini, " was the 
 dream of my young years ; the generating idea of my mental 
 conception ; the keystone of my intellectual edifice, the religion 
 of my soul ; and I entered the city one evening, early in March, 
 with a deep sense of awe, almost of worship. Rome was to me, 
 as in spite of her present degradation she still is, the temple 
 of Humanity." On the iSth of March a committee of 
 war was chosen by the Assembly, on the proposition of 
 Mazzini ; an army of 45,000 was planned, and it was deter- 
 mined to send 10,000 men to aid Piedmont. But after the 
 battle of No vara, by which the Piedmontese monarchy con- 
 sented to what Mazzini designated her " sin and shame," a trium- 
 virate was formed in Rome ; Mazzini, Aurelio Saffi, and 
 Armellini being the triumvirs. The brief history of the 
 glorious Roman Republic and its cruel destruction at the hands 
 of a sister republic are well known. On the 25th of April the 
 French troops landed at Civita Vecchia, and the citizens decided 
 to defend their cause, and, if needful, to die for it. The invasion 
 of Rome was, as Mazzini says, the design of Louis Napoleon, 
 who was meditating his tyranny at home, was desirous of gain- 
 ing the support of the Church, and of accustoming the soldiery 
 to fire on the republican flag. On May 7th the French 
 Assembly desired the French government to empower M. 
 Lesscps, their envoy, to come to terms with the Roman 
 Republic. A treaty was made towards the end of May, by 
 which an alliance was established between the Republic and 
 France, by which the French army was to defend Rome in case 
 of invasion. But this treaty the French general Oudinot 
 refused to recognise, the French made themselves masters
 
 xx MAZZINI. 
 
 of the heights round the city, and the siege began which ended 
 with the overthrow of the Republic and the entry of the French 
 troops into the city. Mazzini was the life and soul of the 
 defence : surrounded by the wounded and the dying, his one 
 fixed idea was the preservation of an unstained flag, the Roman 
 banner on which was inscribed " God and the People," which 
 might become the flag of a regenerated and united country 
 under the lead of Rome. But he came forth from the siege an 
 old and broken man so far as his bodily powers were concerned. 
 Margaret Fuller, whose noble efforts for the wounded during 
 the siege gained for her Mazzini's affectionate regard, thus 
 describes him as he then appeared : — " Mazzini had suffered 
 millions more than I could ; he had borne his fearful 
 responsibility ; he had let his dearest friends perish ; he had 
 passed all these nights without sleep ; in two short months he 
 had grown old ; all the vital juices seemed exhausted ; his eyes 
 were all bloodshot ; his skin orange ; flesh he had none ; his 
 hair was mixed with white ; his hand was painful to the touch ; but 
 he had never flinched, never quailed ; had protested in the last 
 hour against surrender : 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." 
 
 The Republic had fallen, the Vicar of Christ returned to 
 Rome under the protection of French bayonets, and Mazzini 
 went to Switzerland, and afterwards to England. The more 
 active part of his life was over, though he personally assisted in 
 the abortive insurrection of 1857, and strongly opposed the 
 alliance of the Sardinians with the French Emperor in 1859. 
 This was the work of the diplomatic Cavour, and Mazzini did 
 not believe in the salvation of Italy through diplomacy. We 
 know, as a matter of fact, that Italy paid, as the price of this 
 alliance, Savoy and Nice. United Italy, as Mazzini understood 
 it, does not yet exist ; in its place there is a truncated Italy of 
 monarchy and diplomacy, the creation of Victor Emmanuel, 
 Louis Napoleon, and Cavour. Still, that is better than the 
 " geographical expression " of Metternich ; for the Italian has 
 now a country, he has dignity and substantial political freedom.
 
 MAZZINI. xxi 
 
 But he has also, alas, at the same time, huge armaments and 
 terrible poverty. The unity of Italy under a king of the house 
 of Savoy was largely aided by Garibaldi. He had, assisted by 
 Mazzini, carried to a successful issue the insurrection in Sicily, 
 and had become dictator of Central Italy. While Mazzini was 
 urging an advance on Rome, and a movement against Austria 
 in Venice, Garibaldi, on the other hand, transferred his conquests 
 to Victor Emmanuel, whose monarchy was thus consolidated- 
 The union of Rome with Italy was delayed until the fall of the 
 French Empire. On the 20th September 1870 the Italian 
 troops entered the city, and the temporal power of the Papacy 
 ended. 
 
 During this period Mazzini watched carefully all the political 
 and social phenomena, and produced some of his most important 
 writings. An essay on "Europe : its Condition and Prospects," 
 appeared in the Westminster Review in 1852, and the greater 
 part of " The Duties of Man" in 1858. The " Thoughts upon 
 Democracy in Europe" had appeared in 1847 in the People's 
 Journal. Since two cheap and convenient editions of these 
 latter essays have been given to the public within the last few 
 years, they are not included in the present volume, although 
 they contain perhaps the most important and characteristic 
 utterances of Mazzini's thought. In all these essays Mazzini 
 gives to his readers his root ideas. Society conceived as a 
 whole, the thought of collective mankind, composed of free 
 nationalities, life conceived as a mission, duty regarded as the 
 fulfilment of a divine law and as being precedent to individual 
 rights, the union of thought and action, faith shown through 
 works, conscience and tradition the criteria of truth — these are 
 the main ideas herein taught. 
 
 No portion of Mazzini's teaching is more important than his 
 criticism of the ideas summed up in the French Revolution. 
 Mazzini regarded that event as the close, not the opening, of an 
 epoch — the epoch of individual rights, which, after a period of 
 chaos, was to be succeeded by the epoch of association, oi 
 collective life. The Revolution finally conquered for man those 
 rights of the individual contended for by the Protestant
 
 Kxii MAZZINI. 
 
 Reformation, but it necessarily ends, according to Mazzini, in 
 despotism. " When Napoleon, the most powerful individual 
 of that period, arose, and, relying upon force, said Yield — the 
 revolution gave way before him, and with the exception of a 
 very few, all these men who had sworn to die, or live free, held 
 their tongues, and giving in, sat upon the benches of the 
 conservative senate, or upon the benches of the Institute." Has ? 
 then, this individualism done no good work ? Yes ; it is powerful 
 to destroy, and it has burnt up shams and lies not a few. But 
 Mazzini contends that it cannot create ; the new birth can only 
 proceed from the collective life. With Association goes Duly. 
 The individual has hitherto struggled for his rights ; he will 
 now co-operate with his nation in the fulfilment of its mission, 
 with the world in its development of the eternal law of progress. 
 This law is regarded as the unfolding of the Divine will in 
 which, as Mazzini's countryman Dante said, is man's peace. 
 " The absence of a highest form of Duty, universally accepted, 
 to which every one can appeal, little by little and imperceptibly 
 accustoms people's minds to submission to accomplished fads : 
 success becomes the sign of right, and what is done takes the 
 place, in men's worship, of Truth." From this it may be seen 
 that Mazzini is wholly opposed to the doctrine that man acts 
 from mere considerations of self-interest. This doctrine, as- 
 sumed by most economists and politicians as self-evident, but 
 which is visibly losing its hold under the influence of moral 
 teachers like Ruskin, is condemned by Mazzini as resulting in 
 the despotism of authority when starling from the collective 
 point of view, and " in the anarchy of animal propensities " 
 when adopted from the individual point of view. In no case 
 can it afford a foundation for any true society. " No, certainly," 
 he writes, " it was not to attain the ignoble and immoral every 
 one for himself that so many great men, holy martyrs of thought, 
 have shed, from epoch to epoch, from century to century, the 
 tears of the soul, the sweat and blood of the body. Beings of 
 devotedness and love, they laboured and suffered for something 
 higher than the individual ; for that Humanity which ought to 
 be the object of all our efforts, and to which we are all
 
 MAZZINL xxiii 
 
 responsible. Before a generation which scorned or persecuted 
 them, they calmly uttered their prophetic thoughts, with an eye 
 fixed on the horizon of future times ; speaking to that collective 
 being which ever lives, which ever learns, and in which the 
 divine idea is progressively realised ; for that city of the human 
 race, which alone, by the association of all intellects, of all loves, 
 and of all forces, can accomplish the providential design that 
 presided over our creation here below." 
 
 Mazzini's lofty idealism, his religious spirit, and his constant 
 insistence on duty rather than on rights, frequently brought him 
 into antagonism with many of the revolutionists of Europe, who, 
 while they applauded his struggle for Italy, were by no means 
 animated by the same motives which controlled him. Foremost 
 among these was the famous Russian anarchist, Bakounine 
 who, from an atheistic standpoint, criticised severely the 
 theological politics of Mazzini. Yet Bakounine, while opposing 
 the thinker, admired the man. " If there is a man," he says 
 in his pamphlet (written in 1871) " La Theologie politique de 
 Mazzini et l'lnternationale," "universally respected in Europe, 
 and who, during forty years of activity, uniquely devoted to the 
 service of a great cause, has really merited this respect, it is 
 Mazzini. He is incontestably one of the noblest and purest 
 individualities of our age." Bakounine, like Mazzini, believed in 
 association, but his conception of solidarity was very different 
 from that of Mazzini. " The human species," says this Russian 
 thinker, " like all other animal species, has inherent principles 
 which are peculiarly its own, and all these principles sum them- 
 selves up, or reduce themselves, to a single principle which we 
 call solidarity." This is a frank statement of the naturalistic 
 view of man, who is thus regarded as one term of a series of 
 phenomena, and whose desire for union is nothing more than a 
 superior form of the gregarious instinct. This is very different 
 from Mazzini's spiritual union, "his city of the human race," 
 outside time and space. 
 
 Equally decisive was Mazzini's opposition to the older French 
 Communism as preached by Proudhon, Fourier, and Enfantin. 
 These doctrines were based, according to Mazzini, on the old
 
 xxiv MAZZ1NI. 
 
 and false notions of the rights and the personal gratification of 
 the desires of the Ego ; and if carried into practice, would lead 
 either to despotism or anarchy. His attitude towards our 
 current socialism would probably be somewhat different, for 
 that is historical, and is connected with those democratic forms 
 which he thought essential, and which were ignored by the 
 older French Communists. Many Socialists appear to regard 
 Mazzini as mainly interested in the mere political as dis- 
 tinguished from the social question. But this is hardly borne 
 out by his writings, which contain a powerful diagnosis of the 
 present social conditions. Thus he writes — " And as it is 
 impossible to dream of the moral and intellectual progress of 
 the people without providing for its physical amelioration — as 
 it is absurd to say ' Instruct yourself] to a man who is working for 
 his daily bread from fourteen to sixteen hours a-day, or to tell 
 him to love who sees nothing around him but the cold calcula- 
 tions of the speculator and the tyranny of the capitalist legislator 
 — the social question was found inevitably grafted upon the 
 question of political progress. Henceforward they could only 
 be separated by destroying both." And again in the " Duties of 
 Man " — " At the present day — and this is the curse of our actual 
 social economy — capital is the tyrant of labour." His economical 
 ideal is thus defined— "Association — but to be administered 
 with a truly republican fraternity by your own delegates, and 
 from which you should be free to withdraw at your own discre- 
 tion." There is no fundamental divergence between this 
 teaching and that of the present day advocates of Socialism. 
 But it may be admitted that Mazzini was not a great economist ; 
 and that his revolt against the present conditions of labour was 
 rather of the heart than of the head, and that he did .not fully 
 perceive how those very conditions force on a class struggle 
 even in republican communities like the United States. But if 
 he did not fully grasp the economical problem, at least Mazzini 
 did not pretend, like so many, that that problem is to be solved 
 by the preaching of morality. No doubt the problem of society 
 is fundamentally a moral one ; but then morality is not a 
 metaphysical entity existing outside the real world. It is the
 
 MAZZINI. xxv 
 
 expression of a harmonious condition of the individual and 
 society in the actual world. And the charge brought against 
 present economic arrangements is two-fold : — First, that they 
 violate justice by depriving a portion of society of the full result 
 of its labour ; and second, that the physical and social condi- 
 tions under which that portion lives prevent its members from 
 properly developing their faculties, i.e., prevent them from living 
 a truly moral life. If these charges can be sustained, it is 
 evident that the economic problem cannot possibly be separated 
 from the moral problem. And this was undoubtedly Mazzini's 
 view. His objection to a good deal of the Socialist teaching 
 was, that it regarded the social problem as a merely economical 
 question ; whereas it is truly a human problem of which the 
 economical question is only one factor, however important that 
 factor may be. He thus states the problem in his essay on 
 "The War and the Commune" — ''The immediate aim of 
 humanity is the harmonious development of all its faculties and 
 forces towards the discovery and fulfilment of the moral law." 
 The fulfilment of that law obviously involves justice in the 
 economic relations of society ; and just as obviously does it 
 involve conditions favourable to the growth of every man's moral 
 nature. For men cannot develop their characters in the air, but 
 only in the real world of family life, of property, and of 
 institutions. 
 
 The latter years of Mazzini's life were spent in London, where 
 he had now many friends. His health was broken and his body 
 weak. " Physically," says Mr. Garrison the American Aboli- 
 tionist, who visited him in 1867, "he was greatly attenuated, 
 stricken in countenance, broken in health, and evidently near 
 the close of his earthly pilgrimage." But his mind was active 
 as ever, his spirit resolute and strong. " In private society," 
 says Professor Masson, " Mazzini's habits were simple, kindly, 
 affectionate, and sometimes even playful. He had a good deal 
 of humour, and could tell a story or hit off a character very 
 shrewdly and graphically, not omitting the grotesque points." 
 He was ready to talk under favourable circumstances, and his 
 talk 1 ' on such occasions was good, utterly unpedantic, about
 
 xxvi MAZZINI. 
 
 this or that, as it happened, and often with whim and laughter." 
 But if some topic was started on which he had a serious 
 opinion, "he would fight for it, insist upon it, make a little 
 uproar about it, abuse you with mock earnestness for believing 
 the contrary. That would not last long ; a laugh would end it ; 
 we knew Mazzini's way." His last two London residences were 
 in the Fulham Road, and at 2 Onslow Terrace, Brompton, the 
 latter being nearly opposite the spot where Ledru-Rollin lived 
 during his exile in London. His rooms were filled with books 
 and papers, and the birds he always loved to have with him flew 
 about the room as he talked. 
 
 Respecting the Franco-German war and the events of the 
 Commune Mazzini gave his opinions in an article contributed 
 to the Contemporary Review in 187 1. He could not join in the 
 condemnation of Germany, nor did he believe with Garibaldi 
 that the proclamation of the Republic in Paris made any 
 essential difference in the state of affairs, though he was glad to 
 witness the downfall of the Empire. The French Republic, he 
 truly says, " was not the issue of the spontaneous, deliberate 
 vote of a people arising, in the name of eternal duty, to assert 
 their freedom. ... It was a mere de facto consequence of the 
 state of things — of Louis Napoleon's cowardly abdication of his 
 leadership, and of the absence of all other government." Soon 
 after this Mazzini left for Italy, and went to Pisa, where he lived 
 under the name of Giorgio Rosselli Brown. The mild climate 
 of that city might, he thought, restore his shattered health. 
 But in February of the following year he was taken with terrible 
 spasms of the throat, which lasted five days. Then came a brief 
 interlude of relief from pain, but on the 6th March he felt an 
 oppression in his chest, and it was found next day that his 
 right lung was congested. On the 9th his voice left him ; and 
 on the 10th March 1872, while endeavouring to speak to his 
 physician, he fell back dead in his bed. The funeral honours 
 paid to him were national, a vast procession of eighty thousand 
 mourners following him to the grave. His mortal remains 
 repose in a massive granite vault on one of the highest terraces 
 in the Campo Santo of Genoa, the city of his birth. 

 
 MAZZINI. xxvii 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, and Garibaldi have been 
 designated, along with Mazzini, as the founders of modern 
 Italy. But a broad line of demarcation divides Mazzini from 
 the others. Neither the end aimed at nor the means adopted 
 by such a wily diplomatist as Cavour could approve themselves 
 to the pure soul of Mazzini. With no monarch of the house of 
 Savoy could Mazzini hold any terms ; and even Garibaldi he 
 regarded as one who had played false to the Republican ideal. 
 There has been much disputation as to the questions at issue 
 between the Mazzinians and the supporters of the Italian status 
 quo; a good deal of it unprofitable. For the most part it 
 ultimately resolves itself into the everlasting conflict between 
 the idealist and the man of the world. The former stands by 
 the intellect and the conscience ; the latter by the limitations of 
 actual fact and the practical difficulties of the case. Men like 
 Cavour are merely politicians — bold, skilful, subtle, ingenious* 
 ready to adapt themselves to the exigencies of the moment, and 
 to lie any instrument for effecting their object. But to the 
 mind of Mazzini this Machiavellian adroitness and utilitarian 
 compromise was odious ; for Mazzini was above all things a 
 religious man who held that the political question could not be 
 separated from the religious. " The Republican party," he tells 
 us, "is not a political party ; it is essentially a religious party." 
 What common ground is there between this religious idealist 
 on the one hand and the mere soldier or the mere diplomatist 
 on the other? The latter have founded an Italian state of 
 monarchy, of diplomacy, of armaments : Mazzini aimed at 
 founding a religious commonwealth. The aims being so 
 essentially different, argument as to methods seems useless. 
 Mazzini's work was of a wholly different kind from that of the 
 king, the statesman, and the soldier. They were intent on the 
 outer framework ; he on the inner life. They were willing to 
 bend before established fact ; he refused to do so. They have 
 endowed the erewhile " geographical expression " with an 
 outward form, as to the permanence of which few would care to 
 prophesy. It was pre-eminently Mazzini who gave to Italy the 
 breath of a new life, who taught her people constancy in
 
 xxviii MAZZ1NI. 
 
 devotion to an ideal good. Prophets are rarely successful in 
 '.heir own day, and so it has been with the prophet of modern 
 Italy. The making of Italy has not proceeded in the way he 
 hoped it would ; for the Italians, who are an eminently subtle 
 and diplomatic people, have apparently thought it best to bend 
 to the hard facts by which they have been surrounded. But if, 
 as Emerson teaches, facts are "fluid to thought," we may 
 believe that the ideas of Mazzini will yet prevail in the nation 
 of his birth, and that he may yet be regarded as the spiritual 
 father of the future Italian commonwealth. For of him, if of 
 any modern man, we may say that he 
 
 " Saw distant gates of Eden gleam, 
 And did not dream it was a dream ; 
 
 But heard, by secret transport led, 
 Ev'n in the charnels of the dead, 
 The murmur of the fountain-head. " 
 
 WILLIAM CLARKE.
 
 THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN MAZZINI'S LIFE. 
 
 1S05. Date of his birth (June 22). 
 
 1826. His first essay (on Dante) published. 
 
 1827. Joins the Carbonari. 
 
 1830. Arrested for Conspiracy. 
 
 1831. Acquitted by Turin Senate; founded Young Italy 
 
 1832. Decreed exiled from France. 
 
 1833. Projected Rising in Piedmont suppressed. 
 
 1S34. Abortive Expedition from Switzerland. Young Europe 
 
 1836. Exiled from Switzerland. 
 
 1S37. Mazzini arrives in London. 
 
 1844. Mazzini's Correspondence violated by British Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 1848. Insurrection. Mazzini in Italy. 
 
 1849. Siege of Rome. Mazzini returns to London. 
 1S53. Insurrection in Milan. 
 
 1857. Mazzini in Genoa. 
 
 1859. Editor of Pensiere ed Asione. Italian Kingdom 
 
 founded. 
 
 1865. Elected Deputy by Messina, but refused to take oath 
 
 of allegiance. 
 
 1869. Expelled from Switzerland. 
 
 1870. Italian troops enter Rome. 
 
 187 1. Mazzini in Italy. 
 
 1872. Death at Pisa (March 10},
 
 A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WRITINGS OF 
 
 MAZZINI, ARRANGED IN THE ORDER OF 
 
 THEIR PUBLICATION. 
 
 1829. Of an European Literature. 
 
 1830. On the Historical Drama. 
 
 1830. On Fatality considered as an Element of the Dramatic 
 
 Art. 
 
 1833. The Philosophy of Music. 
 
 1835. Faith and the Future. 
 
 1837. On Italian Literature since 1830. 
 
 1838. On Paul Sarpi. 
 
 1838. On the Poems of Victor Hugo. 
 
 1839. Lamennais. 
 1839. George Sand. 
 1839. Byron and Goethe. 
 1839. The Poems of Lamartine. 
 
 1843. On the Genius and Tendency of the Writings of Carlyle 
 
 1843. On Carlyle's History of the French Revolution. 
 
 1844. On the Minor Works of Dante. 
 
 1844. Italy, Austria, and the Pope (Letter to Sir J Graham). 
 
 1844. Duties of Man (first part). 
 
 1847. Thoughts upon Democracy in Europe. 
 
 1849. The Holy Alliance of the Peoples. 
 
 1850. From the Pope to the Council. 
 1850. On the Encyclica of Pius IX. 
 
 1850. Royalty and Republicanism in Italy. 
 
 1852. Europe : Its Condition and Prospects. 
 
 1855. Two Letters on the Crimean War. 
 
 1856. On the Theory of the Dagger. 
 1858. Duties of Man (second part). 
 1858. Letter to Louis Napoleon. 
 
 1861. The Italian Question and the Republicans. 
 
 1865. Address to Pius IX. on his Encyclical. 
 
 187 1. The War and the Commune. 
 
 1872. The Italian School of Republicanism. 
 1874. M. Renan and France.
 
 ESSAYS.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 
 
 -*&*- 
 
 Tiie following little work, written in 1835, was a portion 
 of that European Republican Apostolate I endeavoured to 
 substitute for the French Apostolate, which was impeded 
 and almost crushed beneath the repressive laws of the 
 monarchy of July. Its object was to insist upon the 
 necessity of investing that European Republican Apostolate 
 with a religious character. 
 
 It was published by our printing establishment at Bienne, 
 and was sequestrated at the French frontier. Its circulation 
 was therefore limited to Switzerland, and it remained 
 unknown in Italy except to very few. It was reprinted at 
 Paris in 1850 in French, in which language it was 
 originally written, and at the request of the publisher I 
 then added to it the following Preface. 
 
 33 6
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 London, August 1850. 
 Thr pages now republished were written as far back as 
 1835, and on re-reading them I observe, with profound 
 sorrow, that I might re-write them even now. 
 
 Issued but a few days after the promulgation of the law 
 of the 9 th of September, against the republican press, this 
 work had scarcely any publicity. Fifteen years have 
 passed since then, and yet it does not contain a single page 
 which is not applicable to the present state of things. 
 
 Europe has been shaken to its foundations, agitated by 
 twenty revolutions. France has proclaimed the falsehood 
 of the ultimate formula of monarchy — la monarchic hour- 
 geoise. Germany — calm philosophic Germany — has had ten 
 centres of revolution upon her soil. The roar of the 
 popular lion has been heard at Vienna : the emperor has 
 fled ; the pope has fled. The revolutionary lava has poured 
 along, from Milan to Pesth, from Venice to Berlin, from 
 Rome to Posen. The banner inscribed with the device 
 Liberty, Independence, Right, has floated over two-thirds of 
 Europe. All is at an end. The blood of our heroes and 
 the tears of our mothers have but watered the cross of the 
 martyr. Victory has forsaken our camp, and our war-cry
 
 4 PREFACE. 
 
 now is, of a fatal necessity, the war-cry of fifteen years 
 since. We are condemned to repeat the cry of 1835. 
 There must bo some deep-seated cause for this ; a cause 
 inherent in the very constitution of our party. 
 
 We are superior to our adversaries in courage, in devo- 
 tion, and in knowledge of the wants of the people. Where- 
 soever we have found ourselves one to one — one people 
 against one government — we have been victorious. And 
 we have not abused our victory. At our first uprising we 
 overthrew the scaffold. Our hands are pure. We earned 
 nothing into exile save our unstained conscience, and our 
 faith. 
 
 Why, then, has reaction triumphed 1 
 
 Yes ; the cause is in ourselves ; in our want of 
 organisation, in the dismemberment occasioned in our 
 ranks by systems, some absurd and dangerous, all imperfect 
 and immature, and yet defended in a spirit of fierce and 
 exclusive intolerance ; in our ceaseless distrust, in our 
 miserable little vanities, in our absolute want of that spirit 
 of discipline and order which alone can achieve great 
 results ; in the scattering and dispersing of our forces in a 
 multitude of small centres and sects, powerful to dissolve, 
 impotent to found. 
 
 The cause is in the gradual substitution of the worship of 
 material interests, for the adoration of holy ideas ; for the 
 grand problem of education, which alone can legitimatise 
 our efforts ; for the true conceptions of life and its mission. 
 It is in our having forgotten God ; forgotten his law of 
 love, of sacrifice, and of moral progress, and the solemn
 
 PREFACE. 5 
 
 tradition of humanity, for a theory of well being, the 
 catechism of Volney, the egotistical principle of Bentham ; 
 it is in our indifference to truths of an order superior to 
 this world, which alone are able to transform it. It is in 
 the narrow spirit of Nationalism substituted for the spirit 
 of Nationality ; in the stupid presumption on the part of 
 each people that they are capable of solving the political, 
 social, and economical problem alone ; in their forgetfulness 
 of the great truths that the cause of the peoples is one ; 
 that the cause of the Fatherland must lean upon Hu- 
 manity ; that revolutions, when they are not avowedly a 
 form of the worship of sacrifice for the sake of those who 
 struggle and suffer, are doomed to consume themselves in a 
 circle, and fail ; and that the aim of our warfare, the sole 
 forco that can prevail over the league of these powers, the 
 issue of privilege and interest, is the Holy Alliance of the 
 Nations. The manifesto of Lamartine destroyed the 
 French Revolution of 1848, as the language of narrow 
 nationalism held at Frankfort destroyed the German 
 Revolution ; as the fatal idea of the aggrandisement of the 
 House of Savoy destroyed the Italian Revolution. 
 
 It i3 now more than ever urgent to combat these 
 tendencies — such is the purpose of the following pages. 
 The evil is in ourselves. We must overcome it, or perish. 
 It is necessary that the truth should be made manifest, 
 even where it tells against ourselves. Those who would 
 lead us astray may be irritated by it, but the good sense of 
 the people will profit by it. 
 
 As to our enemies, their fate depends upon the success cf
 
 6 PREFACE. 
 
 our labours. Wo are journeying beneath the storm-cloud, 
 but the sun of God is beyond, bright and eternal. They 
 may veil it from our eyes for a time — cancel it from the 
 heavens they cannot. Europe — God be thanked — is 
 emancipated since Marathon. On that day the stationary 
 principle of the East was vanquished for ever : our soil 
 received the baptism of liberty : Europe moved onward, 
 She advances still ; nor will a few paltry shreds of princely 
 or diplomatic paper suffice to arrest her on her way.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE, 
 
 They who preach patience to the 
 peoples as the sole remedy for the ills by which they are 
 oppressed, or who, while they admit the necessity of a 
 contest, would yet leave the initiative to be taken by their 
 rulers, do not, to my thinking, understand the state of 
 things coming upon us. They mistake the character of the 
 epoch, unconsciously betray the cause they seek to serve, 
 and forget that the mission assigned to the nineteenth 
 century is profoundly organic ; a work of initiation and 
 renovation only to be fulfilled in spontaneity, frankness, 
 courage, and conscience. 
 
 It is not enough to precipitate a monarchy into a gulf ; 
 the gulf must be closed up, and a durable edifice erected on 
 its site. Monarchies are quickly made and unmade. 
 Napoleon crushed ten in his iron hand, yet monarchy itself 
 lives to gaze upon his tomb with the smile of victory. 
 Three strokes dealt by the people in 1830 destroyed a 
 monarchy eight centuries old ; yet we are the proscribed of 
 a new monarchy arisen upon its ruins. 
 
 It is well to remember this. 
 
 The fifteen yearn' farce (la Come" die de quinze ans) was
 
 S MAZZINL 
 
 admirably played in Franca The astute, irreproachable 
 Jesuitism of the actors well deserved the envy of monarchy 
 itself. But what have been the results 1 
 
 The fifteen years' farce destroyed the monarchy of the 
 elder branch of the Bourbons ; but it destroyed at the same 
 time that frank, austere, revolutionary energy which had 
 placed France at the head of European nations ; it 
 condemned the ruling power to a state of perennial terror, 
 but it also doomed the most enlightened part of France to 
 long years of immorality. It instilled hypocrisy into the 
 souls of men ; it substituted a spirit of calculation for 
 enthusiasm ; the arts of defence for the initiative power 
 of genius ; the brain for the heart. The manly, vigorous 
 national idea paled beneath a multitude of puny incomplete 
 conceptions ; and apostasy was introduced into the political 
 sphere. 
 
 The subtle, treacherous, deceitful warfare of the fifteen 
 years' farce spread a stratum of corruption over French 
 civilisation, the consequences of which yet endure. A 
 second such would be fatal indeed, and it is important that 
 we should reflect on this. 
 
 When the times are right for detaching ourselves from 
 the present and advancing towards the future, all hesita- 
 tion is fatal ; it enervates and dissolves. Rapidity of 
 movement is the secret of great victories. 
 
 When the consequences of a principle are exhausted, and 
 the edifice which had rested upon it for centuries is 
 threatened with ruin, it behoves us to shake the dust from 
 our feet, and hasten elsewhere. Life is beyond, without. 
 Within is the icy breath of the tomb ; scepticism wanders 
 amid the ruins, and egotism tracks its footsteps, followed 
 by isolation and death. 
 
 And now the times are ripe. The consequences of the
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 9 
 
 principle of individuality, dominant over the past, are 
 exhausted. Monarchy in its second restoration has lost 
 all creative power ; its existence is a wretched plagiarism. 
 Show me a single important act, a single manifestation of 
 European life, which is not the issue of the social principle, 
 which has not sprung from the people, the monarch of the 
 future. The old world is incapable of aught but resistance; 
 the only force it has left is the force of inertia. The 
 aristocracies of the present day are but dead forms, arti- 
 ficially put in motion from time to time by galvanic power. 
 Monarchy is but the reflection, the shadow of a life that 
 has been. 
 
 The future has called U3 since 1814. For two and 
 twenty years have the people heard its voice, and yearned 
 to advance. And shall we retrace our steps, shall we re- 
 commence a work that is completed, copy the past, and 
 return to a state of infancy because monarchy is decrepit 1 
 
 Analysis can never regenerate the peoples. Analysis is 
 potent to dissolve ; impotent to create. Analysis will 
 never lead us further than the theory of individuality, and 
 the triumph of the individual principle could only lead us 
 to a revolution of Protestantism and mere liberty. The 
 Republic is quite other. 
 
 The Republic — as I understand it at least — is the enthrone- 
 ment of the principle of association, of which liberty is 
 merely an element, a necessary antecedent. Association is 
 synthesis ; and synthesis is divine : it is the lever of the 
 world ; the only method of regeneration vouchsafed to the 
 human family. Opposition, is analysis ; an instrument of 
 mere criticism. It generates nothing ; it destroys. When 
 analysis has declared a principle extinct, it seats itself
 
 io MAZZINI. 
 
 beside the corpse, and moves not onward. Synthesis alone 
 has power to thrust the corpse aside, and advance in search 
 of new life. 
 
 Thus it was that the revolution of 1789 — a revolution 
 intimately protestant in character — ended by enthroning 
 analysis, affirming the fraternity of individuals, and organ- 
 ising liberty. And thus it was that the revolution of 1830 
 — a revolution entirely of opposition — revealed at the very 
 outset its incapacity of reducing to action the social idea, 
 of which it had a dim and distant perception. Opposition 
 can do no more than lay bare the decay, sterility, and ex- 
 haustion of a principle. Beyond that it sees nought but 
 the void. Now we can build up nothing upon the void. 
 A republic cannot be founded upon a demonstration per 
 absurdum ; the proof direct is indispensable. A new 
 dogma alone cannot save us. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Two things are essential to the realisation of the progress 
 we seek : the declaration of a principle and its incarnation 
 in action. 
 
 The tortures of slavery have been for the peoples an 
 initiation in the worship of liberty. Their sufferings have 
 been beyond expression : the energy of their arising will 
 be beyond all expectation. Their sorrows were blessed. 
 They learned a truth with every tear. Every year of 
 martyrdom was a preparation for their complete redemption. 
 They have drained the cup to its last dregs ; naught 
 remains but to dash it in pieces.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. n 
 
 What, then, are we to do ? 
 
 To preach, to combat, to act.* 
 
 The republican party has nothing to alter either in its 
 language or bearing. Any change introduced from any 
 mere idea of tactics would lower it into a political party. 
 Now the republican party is not a political party ; it is 
 essentially a religious party. From the days of Spartacus 
 downwards, it has had its dogma, its faith, its martyrs ; 
 and it ought to have the inviolability of dogma, the 
 infallibility of faith, the power of sacrifice, and the cry 
 of action of martyrs. Its forgetfulness of this duty, its 
 imitation of monarchy or aristocracy, its substitutions 
 
 * I say to act; but in laying down this principlo_of action as our 
 rule of conduct, I do not speak of action on any terms ; of feverish, 
 ill-considered, disorganised action. I speak of action as the principle, 
 the programme, the hanner ; as that which ought to be alike the 
 tendency and the avowed aim of our exertions. The rest is a question 
 of time, with which it is unnecessary to occupy ourselves here. What 
 we want is that a temporary necessity shall not be elevated into a 
 permanent theory ; that the peoples shall not be deluded into 
 substituting an indefinite, uncertain, peacefully progressive force of 
 tilings, for true revolutionary activity ; — that men shall not persist in 
 attributing to the irregular and coldly analytic work of opposition, tho 
 power of revelation belonging to the revolutionary synthesis. I 
 repudiate systematic inertia — the silence that broods, the simulation 
 that betrays ; and invoke a frank, sincere declaration of our dogma 
 and belief. Our cry is the cry of Ajax. We desire to combat in the 
 light of day, beneath tho ray of heaven. Is this puerile impatience ? 
 No, it is the complement of our doctrine, the baptism of our faith. 
 The principle of action which we inscribe upon our banner is strictly 
 allied to our belief in a new epoch. How can this epoch bo initiated 
 if not through tho people, through action, which is tho word of the 
 people. Without this principle of action, which we mako the guide 
 and rule of our every effort, the movement would bo one of reaction 
 only, and as such productive of imperfect, extrinsic, aud merely 
 material changes in the actual stale ofihi/igs.
 
 i2 MAZZmi. 
 
 of negations for a positive belief — these are the things that 
 have so often caused its overthrow. The idea, the religious 
 thought, of which — even when unconsciously — it is the 
 representation on earth, has often raised it up, gigantic 
 in power, when we believed it crushed for ever. 
 
 We ought not to forget this. Political parties fall and 
 die : religious parties never die until after they have 
 achieved their victory ; until their vital principle lias 
 attained its fullest development and become identified with 
 the progress of civilisation and manners. 
 
 Then, and not before then, does God infuse into the 
 heart of a people, or the brain of an individual strong in 
 genius and in love, a new idea, vaster and more fruitful 
 than the idea then expiring ; the centre of faith is moved 
 one degree onwards, and only they who rally round that 
 centre constitute the party of the future. 
 
 The republican party has then nothing to fear as to the 
 final result of its mission ; nothing from those defeats of an 
 hour which do not affect the main body of an army, and 
 only tend to call back to the centre those troops whom the 
 ardour of battle has scattered. The danger is elsewhere. 
 
 You deceive yourselves, we are told. The peoples lack 
 faith. The masses are dormant, inert. They have worn 
 chains so long as to lose the habit of motion. You have to 
 do with Helots, not with men. How can you drag them 
 into the battle, or maintain them in the field % How often 
 have we called them to arms to the cry of people, liberty, 
 vengeance I They did but raise their heavy heads for an 
 instant, to sink back into their former stupor. They have 
 seen the funeral procession of our martyrs pass them by, 
 and understood not that with them were entombed their
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 13 
 
 own rights, their own lives, their own salvation. They 
 seek after gold, and are held in inertia by fear. Enthusiasm 
 is extinct, and it is not easy to rekindle it. Now, without 
 the help of the masses you cannot act ; you may teach 
 martyrdom, but not victory. Die, if you believe that your 
 blood will sooner or later raise up a generation of avengers, 
 but do not seek to drag into your destiny thoso who have 
 neither your energy nor your hopes. Martyrdom can never 
 become the religion of a whole party. It is useless to 
 exhaust the forces which may one day be of service in 
 unsuccessful efforts. Do not deceive yourselves as to your 
 epoch. Resign yourselves to await in patience. 
 
 The question is momentous. It involves the future of 
 the party. 
 
 Yes, the peoples lack faith : not that individual faith 
 which creates martyrs, but that social faith which is the 
 parent of victory ; the faith that arouses the multitudes ; 
 faith in their own destiny, in their own mission, and in the 
 mission of the epoch : the faith that combats and prays ; 
 the faith that enlightens, and bids men advance fearlessly 
 in the ways of God and Humanity, with the sword of the 
 people in their hand, the religion of the people in their 
 heart, and the future of the people in their soul. 
 
 But such faith as this — preached by the sole priest of 
 the Epoch, Lamennais — and which we are all bound 
 nationally to reduce to action — what is wanted to give 
 it to us 1 Is it strength, or the consciousness of strength, 
 that we need ? Have we lost it through the recognition of 
 Dur real powerlessness, or through opinions that are 
 erroneous, and prejudices that may be removed 1 "Would 
 not one energetic act of will re-establish an equilibrium
 
 i 4 MAZZIN1. 
 
 between tho oppressor and the oppressed 1 And suppose 
 this to be so, have we striven to achieve it 1 Are our own 
 tendencies, our own manifestations of the idea we seek to 
 promote, such as to realise the aim 1 Are we, whom chance 
 has placed at the head of the movement, or are the multi- 
 tudes who do but follow lead, to blame for the actual stato 
 of inertia 1 
 
 Look at Italy. Misfortune, suffering, protest, individual 
 sacrifice, have reached their climax there. The cup is full. 
 Oppression is everywhere, like the air we breathe, but 
 rebellion also. Three separate states, twenty cities, two 
 millions of men arise, and in one week overthrow their 
 governments, and proclaim their own emancipation, without 
 a single protest raised, or a single drop of blood shed. One 
 attempt constantly succeeds another. Do these twenty- 
 five millions of men lack strength? Italy in revolution 
 would be strong enough to conquer three Austrias. Do 
 they lack the inspiration of great traditions — the religion 
 of memory — the past? The people still bow down in 
 reverence before the relics of the grandeur that has been. 
 Do they lack a mission ? Only to Italy has it been vouch- 
 safed twice to give the word of unity to Europe. Do they 
 lack courage 1 Ask it of 1746, of the records of the Grand 
 Armee, of the thrice holy martyrs who, during the last 
 fourteen years, have died there silently, without glory, for 
 an idea. 
 
 Look at Switzerland. Can any one deny the valour or 
 the profound spirit of independence that distinguishes 
 these sons of the Alps 1 Five centuries of struggle, of 
 intrigues, and of civil and religious discord, have failed to 
 soil the Swiss banner of 1308. Nevertheless, Switzerland, 
 whose battle-cry would arouse Germany and Italy, though 
 well aware how the monarchs of Europe would shrink
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 15 
 
 from the idea of an European war sought by the peoples, 
 because conscious that the last battle of that war would be 
 the Waterloo of Monarchy, — Switzerland continually sub- 
 mits to insult and stoops to dishonour at the present day, 
 and bows her head to the paltriest note of an Austrian 
 agent. 
 
 Remember 1813 : the youth of Germany abandoning 
 their universities to fight the battles of independence ; the 
 thrill that ran throughout the whole country at the cry of 
 nationality and independence ;— and tell me whether that 
 people would not have arisen had their deputies, electors, 
 writers, all the influential men who preferred the circumlo- 
 cution of constitutional opposition, rallied round the banner 
 of Hambach 1 
 
 Remember Grochow, Waver, Ostrolenska ; and tell me 
 what would have been the condition of Russia, if instead of 
 wasting precious time in imploring the protection of 
 diplomacy for that Poland which diplomacy had been 
 sacrificing for a century past, — the combatants had rapidly 
 carried the action of the revolutionary principle to its 
 natural centre, beyond the Bug ; if a vaster conception of 
 popular emancipation had called into action those races 
 whose secret was revealed in 1848 by Bogdan Chiel- 
 micki, — if while enthusiasm reigned supreme and the 
 enemy was stupefied by terror, while the multitudes of 
 Lithuania, TJkrania, and Gallicia, were burning with the 
 hope of liberty, the insurrectionary forces had pushed on 
 into Lithuania. 
 
 I write it with the deepest conviction : there is scarcely 
 a single people unable by dint of faith, sacrifice, and 
 revolutionary logic, to burst their chains in the face of the 
 monarchies of Europe united against them ; not a single 
 people who, in the holiness of an idea of love and the future,
 
 1 6 MAZZINL 
 
 and in the strength of a word inscribed upon their insurrec- 
 tionary banner, might not initiate an European crusade ; 
 not a single people to whom the opportunity of doing so has 
 not been offered since 1830. 
 
 But in Italy, in Germany, in Poland, in Switzerland, in 
 France, everywhere indeed, the true original nature of the 
 revolutionary movements has been altered by men, un- 
 fortunately influential, but grasping and ambitious ; who 
 have regarded the uprising of a people but as an oppor- 
 tunity for power or profit ; — or by weak men, trembling at 
 the difficulties and dangers of the enterprises, who have at 
 the outset sacrificed the logic of insurrection to their own 
 fears. Everywhere have false and pernicious doctrines 
 caused the revolutions to deviate from their true aim ; the 
 idea of a caste has been substituted for the popular idea of 
 the emancipation of all by all ; the idea of foreign help has 
 weakened or destroyed the national idea. Nowhere have 
 the promoters, the leaders, the governments of the insurrec- 
 tions, determined to cast into the balance of the country's 
 destiny, the entire sum of forces which might have been 
 put in motion by sufficient energy of will ; nowhere has the 
 consciousness of a great mission, and faith in its fulfilment, 
 a true comprehension of the age and of its ruling thought, 
 governed the action of those who, by assuming the direction 
 of events, had pledged themselves to humanity for their 
 successful issue. The mission before them was a mission of 
 giants, and to perform it they stooped down to earth. 
 They had half defined the secret of the generations ; they 
 had heard the cry of the great human families striving to 
 shake off the dust of the sepulchre, and to arise to new 
 life ; they were called upon to declare the Word of the 
 people and of the peoples, without fear or reserve — and 
 they did but stammer forth hesitating words of concessions,
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 17 
 
 of charters, of compacts between power and right, between 
 the unjust and the just. Even as age in its decrepitude 
 demands of art some element of fictitious life, so they 
 sought from the policy of the past the idea of its imperfect 
 and fugitive existence. They were bound — even though it 
 were raised upon their own dead bodies — to elevate the 
 banner of insurrection so high that all the peoples might 
 read therein its promises of victory; and they dragged it 
 through the mud of royalty, veiled it beneath protocols, or 
 hung it idly up — an ensign of prostitution — over the doors 
 of foreign Chancelleries. They put their trust in the 
 promises of every minister, in the hopes held out by every 
 ambassador, in everything save in the omnipotence of the 
 people. 
 
 We have seen the leaders of revolution immersed in the 
 study of the treaties of 1815, seeking therein the charter 
 Df Italian or Polish liberty : others, more culpable, pro- 
 claiming aloud the negation of Humanity, and the ailirm- 
 ation of egotism, by inscribing upon their banner a 
 principle of non-intervention worthy of the middle ages : 
 others, more guilty still, denying both their brothers and 
 fatherland, and breaking the national unity at the very 
 moment when it behoved them to initiate its triumph, when 
 the foreigner was advancing to their gates, by declaring 
 — Bolognese I the cause of the Modenese is not our cause. 
 
 In their anxiety to legalise their revolution they forgot 
 that every insurrection must derive its legality from its 
 aim, its legitimacy from victory, its means of defence from 
 offence, and the pledge of its success from its extension. 
 They forgot that the charter of a nation's liberties is an 
 article of the charter of humanity, and that they alone 
 deserve that charter who are ready to conquer or die for 
 all humanity. 
 
 337
 
 1 8 MAZZWL 
 
 "When the pooplos saw the initiators of revolution turn 
 pale before the enterprise, and either shrink from the 
 necessity of action, or advance trembling or uncertain, 
 without any definite purpose, without any programme, 
 or any hope save in foreign aid, even they became timid 
 and hesitating ; or rather they felt that the hour was not 
 yet come, and held back. In the face of revolutions 
 betrayed at their very outset, the multitudes stood aloof ; 
 enthusiasm was crushed at its birth ; faith disappeared. 
 
 * # # 
 
 Faitii disappeared : but what havo we done, what do we 
 even now to revive it ? Shame and grief ! Ever since 
 that holy light of the peoples faded away, we have either 
 wandered in the darkness, without bond, plan, or unity of 
 design ; or folded our arms like men in despair. Some of 
 us, after uttering a long cry of grief, have renounced all 
 earthly progress to murmur a hymn of resignation, a prayer 
 like the prayer of the dying : others have rebelled against 
 hope, and, smiling in bitterness, have proclaimed the reign 
 of darkness by accepting scepticism, irony, and incredulity 
 as things inevitable, and their blasphemy has been re- 
 sponded to by the corruption of those already degraded, and 
 by the suicide of despair of the pure in heart. The literature 
 of the present day oscillates between these two extremes. 
 Others, remembering the light that had illumined their 
 infancy, retraced their weary steps to the sanctuary they 
 had abandoned, hoping to rekindle the flame ; or, concen- 
 trating the mind in purely subjective contemplation, 
 merged existence in the Ego, forgetting or denying the 
 external world to bury themselves in the study of the 
 individual. Such is our present philosophy.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. rg 
 
 0'l)er«, born to struggle, and urged on by a power of 
 ;ice which, wisely directed, might have wrought 
 miracles — impelled by instincts sublime, but indefinite — 
 seized the banner that floated over the graves of their 
 fathers, and rushed onwards ; but they separated before 
 they had advanced many steps, and each of them tearing a 
 fragment from the banner, endeavoured to make of it the 
 standard of the entire army. Such is the history of our 
 political life. 
 
 The reader must pardon my reiterating these plaints. 
 They are my dclcnda est Carthago. My work is not a 
 labour of authorship, but a sincere and earnest mission of 
 apostolate. Such a mission does not admit of diplomacy. 
 I am seeking the secret of the delay in our advance, which 
 appears to me to bo attributable to causes apart from the 
 strength of the enemy ; I am striving to put the question 
 in such a manner as will enable us speedily to regain a lost 
 initiative. I must either be silent or speak on the whole 
 truth. 
 
 Now it seems to me that there are two principal causes 
 for this delay ; both of them dependent upon the party's 
 deviation from the true path; both of them tending to the 
 substitution of the worship of the past for the worship of 
 the future. 
 
 The first is the error which has led us to regard as a pro- 
 gramme of the future that which was in fact but a "rand 
 summing up of the past; a formula expressing the results 
 of the labour and achievements of an entire epoch — to con- 
 found two distinct epochs and two distinct syntheses — and 
 to narrow a mission of social renovation to the proportions 
 of a mere work of deduction and development. It has led 
 us to abandon the principle for the symbol, the God for the 
 idol ; to immobilise that initiative which is the cross of fire
 
 2o MA77JNI. 
 
 transmitted by God from people to people ; to destroy the 
 legitimacy of nationality, which is the life of the peoples, 
 their mission, and the means given them by -which to 
 achieve it ; which marks out the part assigned to them by 
 God in our common work and duty — the evolution of his 
 thought, one and multiple, which is the soul of our existence 
 here below.* 
 
 The second cause is the error which has led us to con- 
 found the principle with one of its manifestations ; the 
 
 * I have sketched forth my ideas upon the French Revolution, 
 considered as the last word of an expiring epoch, rather than the first 
 word of the epoch initiated by the nineteenth century, in an article 
 "On the Revolutionary Initiative," published in the E6vue Mepubli- 
 
 caine, 1835 In reverting to the study of the past, my object 
 
 is to seek, in the historical evolution of the successive terms of 
 progress, for data indicating a new social aim ; an European 
 synthesis, which, by removing the initiative from the hands of one 
 sole people superior to the rest, will inspire all with the activity 
 wanting at the present day ; — because I desire to see thought trans- 
 lated into action — the fatal circle broken, within which all present 
 action is restricted, and a decisive battle fought between the two 
 principles now striving for mastery in Europe. 
 
 But ought we — I have been asked — to forget facts in order to 
 improvise, according to our wishes, a revolutionary force where none 
 in reality exists ? Can we cancel the past ? Can we leave out of our 
 calculations the late revolutions of Bologna and Modena ? 
 
 Theoretically speaking, our religious and philosophical belief does 
 elevate us to a height excluding all arguments deduced from those 
 incidental facts. We are approaching one of those palingenetic 
 moments which introduce a new term into the terrestrial synthesis, 
 generate new forces, and present — so to speak — a new philosophic 
 fulcrum to every question. We hail the dawn of a new epoch, and 
 the revolution now approaching will embrace a large portion of 
 humanity. Now every new aim calls new elements into action among 
 the peoples. 
 
 But leaving aside the principal question, why do my objectors forget 
 in their turn that the people — the only true revolutionary force existing
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 21 
 
 eternal element of every social organisation with one of its 
 successive developments ; and to believe that mission ful- 
 filled which is but modified and enlarged. This error has 
 led us to break the unity of the conception precisely where 
 it demands the widest extension ; to mistake the function 
 of the eighteenth century, and to make of a negation the 
 point of departure for the nineteenth. We abandoned the 
 religious idea precisely when it was most urgent to revive 
 and extend it until it should embrace the sum of things 
 
 — has never yet descended into the arena ? That our recollections 
 liave never gone beyond the circle of a military or bourgeois caste? 
 That the multitudes have never been called upon to participate in the 
 enterprise ? Why do they forget that insurrection with us has never 
 yet assumed an avowedly Italian character ? Why argue against a 
 republican revolution such as we are striving to create, from the ill 
 success of the monarchical movements of 1821 ? Can we calculate the 
 consequences of the action of a principle contrary to it ? Between 
 us, the republicans of Young Italy, and those who have acted before 
 us ; between those who seek to raise the multitudes to the cry of God 
 and the people, and the timid and illogical men who forgot God and 
 feared the people, the difference is immense. 
 
 The movements of Modena and Bologna failed because unsupported 
 by Franco. True. What insurrection would not fail if betrayed by 
 the very principle upon which it had based its existence ? Now the 
 principle upon which the insurrectionary governments of Italy had 
 exclusively relied, was the principle of non-intervention. Their blind 
 belief in non-intervention withheld them from the only course of action 
 that might have saved them. The masses were repulsed by them ; 
 the young discouraged ; the power of initiative unrecognised ; tho 
 duty of arming neglected ; the national idea denied ; and the insur- 
 rection restricted within tho limits of a province. But are these 
 sources of weakness permanent ? Every Italian whose patriotism has 
 not been perverted in the councils of the Parisian juste milieu will tell 
 you, that if our endeavours are still fruitless, if even yet we number 
 more martyrs than soldiers, we owe it above all things to the opinion 
 that the initiative of the European struggle belongs to France, and 
 that so long as she remains inert, none should attempt to move.
 
 22 MAZZ1NL 
 
 destined to be transformed, and unite in ono social 
 
 conception the forces that are now isolated and divided. 
 
 The eighteenth century, too generally regarded as an ago 
 of mere scepticism and negation, devoted solely to a labour 
 of criticism, had yet a faith of its own, a mission of its own, 
 and a practical method for the realisation of that mission. 
 Its faith was a Titanic, limitless belief in human power and 
 in human liberty. Its measure was to take stock — if I may 
 be allowed the expression — of the first epoch of the 
 European world ; to sum up, and reduce to a concrete 
 
 It is therefore of urgent necessity to combat this opinion, which is 
 preached precisely by those who are powerful in means and influence, 
 and who therefore ought to be the first to act. It is an opinion 
 destructive to the conscience and the future of the peoples, and the 
 Republicans of France ought to unite with us in opposing it. My 
 purpose is not to reproach France, but to invite her to introduce a new 
 language and new tendency into the Republican press more in harmony 
 with the new mission. Reproaches are for those who, dwelling among 
 the oppressed peoples, increase the difficulties of the work of emanci- 
 pation by a pretended belief, which in most of them is in fact but the 
 absence of all earnest conviction; reproaches are for those who, while 
 they boast themselves the apostles of an Humanitarian synthesis, 
 follow out the doctrine of one solo revealer and its negation of con- 
 tinuous human progress, from consequence to consequence, till they 
 are led to deny the progressive intellectual sovereignty of the people, 
 and to evoke I know not what renovation of the Papacy. Reproaches 
 are for those who declare it impossible for humanity to exist until 
 France shall be hailed queen of the universe ("v. Histoiro Parlemen- 
 taire de la Revolution Francaise," Christ et Peuple, par A. Seguier). 
 Nor is this the isolated idea of this or that individual, but the idea of 
 a school. Now I protest against the doctrines of that school ; against 
 its national egotism, aud against its usurping tendencies. But regard- 
 ing as brothers all those who understand the association of free men 
 and equals, I feel a peculiar affection for the people which for fifty 
 years fought in the name of the emancipation of the nations, and 
 translated the grand results of the Christian epoch into the poliu 
 sphere.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 23 
 
 formula, that which eighteen centuries of Christianity had 
 examined, evolved, and achieved ; to constitute the indi- 
 vidual such as he was destined and designed to be — free, 
 sacred, and inviolable. And this mission it accomplished 
 through the French Revolution — which was the political 
 translation of the Protestant revolution ;* a manifestation 
 eminently religious, whatever may be said by those super- 
 ficial writers who judge a whole period by the errors of 
 individuals, secondary actors in the great drama. The 
 instrument adopted to work out the revolution, and reach 
 the aim it was its mission to achieve, was the idea of right. 
 From the theory of rigid it derived its power, its mandate, 
 the legitimacy of its acts. The declaration of the rights of 
 man is the supreme and ultimate formula of the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 And what, indeed, is man, individual man, if not a right ? 
 In the series of the terms of progress does he not represent 
 the human personality, the element of individual emanci- 
 pation 1 And the aim of the eighteenth century was to 
 fulfil the human evolution which had been anticipated and 
 
 * It is a mistake to judge tlio work of moral emancipation achieved 
 by the Reformation by the incident of that protest against the diet of 
 Spires, which gave rise to the word Protestantism. Protestantism 
 was not, as neo-Christians affirm, a work of negation or of criticism 
 with regard to the epoch ; it was a positive Christian production, a 
 solemn manifestation of the individual man — solo object and aim of 
 Christianity. It protested, it is true, but only against the Papacy, 
 which, by willing that which it was incapable of achieving, and 
 attempting to found a social unity with an individual instrument, of 
 necessity degenerated into tyranny, and thus placed itself beyond the 
 pale of the Christian synthesis — which ordained that man should bo 
 free — before it had attained its complete development. It was a pro- 
 test, therefore, not against the synthesis of its epoch, but in favour of 
 that synthesis, which tho Papacy — impotent to realise its sublime 
 instinct of the future — annihilated, instead of fostering and promoting.
 
 24 MAZZINI. 
 
 foreseen by the ancients, proclaimed by Christianity, and 
 in part realised by Protestantism. A multitude of obstacles 
 stood between the century and that aim, every description 
 of impediment and restraint upon the spontaneity and free 
 development of individual faculties ; prohibitions, rules, 
 and precepts limiting human activity ; the traditions of a 
 past activity now decayed; aristocracies wearing a sem- 
 blance of intellect and power ; religious forms forbidding 
 movement and advance. 
 
 It was necessary to overthrow all these, and the 
 eighteenth century overthrew them. It waged a terrible 
 but victorious war against all things tending to fractionise 
 human power ; to deny movement, or to arrest the flight 
 of intelligence. 
 
 Every great revolution demands a great idea to be its 
 centre of action ; to furnish it with both lever and 
 fulcrum for the work it has to do. This conception 
 the eighteenth century supplied by placing itself in the 
 centre of its own subject. It was the Ego, the human 
 conscience, the Ego sum of Christ to the powers of his day. 
 
 Firm on that centre as its base, the Revolution, conscious 
 of its own strength and sovereignty by right of conquest, 
 disdained to prove to the world its origin, its link with the 
 past. It simply affirmed. It cried aloud like Fichte : 
 there is no liberty without equality : all men are equal. 
 After this it began to deny. It denied the inert past ; it 
 denied feudalism, aristocracy, monarchy. It denied the 
 Catholic* dogma of absolute passivity that poisoned the 
 
 * None can, on any rational ground, accuse me of failing to re- 
 cognise the Catholic spirit that presides over the destinies of modern 
 civilisation. All are aware of the meaning generally given to the 
 word Catholic. If Catholic had assumed no other meaning than 
 universal, I would call to mind that every religion naturally tends to 
 become Catholic, and most especially so that synthesis which inscribes 
 Humanity at the head of its formulae.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 25 
 
 sources of liberty, and placed despotism at the summit of 
 the social edifice. lluins there were without end, but in the 
 midst of those ruins and negations one immense affirmation 
 stood erect ; the creature of God, ready to act, radiant in 
 power and will ; the ecce homo, repeated after eighteen 
 centuries of struggle and suffering ; not by the voice of the 
 martyr, but from the altar raised by the revolution to 
 Victory — Right, the faith of individuality, rooted in the 
 world for ever. 
 
 And is this all we seek ? Ought man, gifted with pro- 
 gressive activity, to remain quiescent like an emancipated 
 slave, satisfied with his solitary liberty 1 Does naught 
 remain in fulfilment of his mission on earth, but a work of 
 consequences and deductions to be translated into the 
 sphere of fact ; or conquests to be watched over and 
 defended 1 
 
 Because the human unknown quantity has been deter- 
 mined, because one among the terms of progress — that of 
 the individual — has taken its place among the known and 
 defined quantities, is the series of terms composing the 
 great equation concluded 1 Is the faculty of progress 
 exhausted 1 Is naught but rotatory motion left to us ? 
 
 Because man, consecrated by the power of thought king 
 of the earth, has burst the bonds of a worn-out religious 
 form that imprisoned and restrained his activity and inde- 
 pendence, are we to have no new bond of universal fra- 
 ternity? no religion? no recognised and accepted conception 
 of a general and providential law ? 
 
 No, eternal God! Thy AVord is not all fulfilled; thy 
 thought, the thought of the world, not all revealed, 
 That thought creates still, and will continue to create for 
 a (r es incalculable by man. The ages that have passed have 
 but revealed to us some fragments of it. Our mission is
 
 26 MAZZINI. 
 
 not concluded. As yet we scarcely know its origin, wo 
 know not its ultimate aim. Time and discovery do but 
 enlarge its boundaries. It is elevated from age to age 
 towards destinies unknown to us, seeking the law of which 
 as yet we know but the first lines. From initiation to 
 initiation, throughout the series of thy successive incarna- 
 tions, this- mission has purified and enlarged the formula of 
 sacrifice ; it learns the path it has to follow by tha study of 
 an eternally progressive faith. Forms are modified and 
 dissolved — religious beliefs are exhausted. The human 
 spirit leaves them behind as the traveller leaves behind 
 the fires that warmed him through the night, and seeks 
 another scene. But religion remains : the idea is immortal, 
 survives the dead forms, and is reborn from its own ashes. 
 The idea detaches itself from the worn-out symbol ; 
 disengages itself from its involucrum, which analysis has 
 consumed, and shines forth in purity and brightness, a 
 new star in humanity's heaven. How many such shall 
 faith kindle ere the whole path of the future shall be 
 illumined 1 Who shall tell how many stars — secular 
 thoughts, liberated from every cloud — shall ariso and take 
 their place in the heaven of intellect, ere man, the living 
 summary of the terrestrial Word, may declare : I have faith 
 in myself, my destiny is accomplished. 
 
 Such is the law. One labour succeeds another; one 
 synthesis succeeds another, and the latest revealed ever 
 presides over the work we have to accomplish, and pre- 
 scribes its method and organisation. It comprehends all 
 the terms included in the preceding synthesis, plus the new 
 term, which becomes the aim of every endeavour, the 
 unknown quantity to be determined, and added to the 
 known. Analysis also has its share in the labour done ; 
 but it derives its programme and point of departure from
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 2) 
 
 the synthesis of the epoch. Analysis, in fact, has no lifo 
 of its own : its existence is merely objective, it derives its 
 purpose, law, and mission elsewhere. A portion of every 
 epoch, it is the insignia of none. Those writers who 
 divide the epochs into two classes — organic and critical — 
 falsify history. Every epoch is essentially synthetic; every 
 epoch is organic. The progressive evolution of the thought 
 of Gocl, of which our world is the visible manifestation, is 
 sasingly continuous. The chain cannot be broken or 
 interrupted. The various aims are united together — the 
 cradle is linked to the tomb. 
 
 * « » 
 
 No sooner, therefore, had the French Revolution con- 
 cluded one epoch, than the first rays of another appeared 
 above the horizon. No sooner had the triumph of the 
 human individual been proclaimed by the charter of rights, 
 than intelligence foretold a new charter, the charter of 
 Principles. No sooner was the unknown quantity of the 
 so-called middle ages determined and the aim of the 
 Christian synthesis achieved,* than a new unknown 
 quantity, a new aim, was set before the present generation.' 
 On every side the doubt has arisen — of what advantage 
 is liberty 1 Of what advantage equality, which is in fact 
 
 * I foresee that it will bo objected that the conquest of human rights 
 
 is mi illusion ; that slavery and inequality still endure on every side ; 
 
 that the struggle was but commenced by the French Revolution. I 
 
 il be told that the principle of individuality still governs every 
 
 tion, and that while I am speaking of a new epoch inefficacious 
 
 prayers aro everywhere put up for the accomplishment and realisa- 
 
 : in action of the very synthesis which I bave stated to bo 
 
 lusted. 
 
 t not confound the discovery of a term of progress with its
 
 28 MAZZINI. 
 
 but the liberty of alH What is the free man but an 
 activity, a force, to be put in motion ? In what direction 
 shall he move ? As chance or caprice may direct 1 But 
 that is not life, it is a mere succession of acts, of pheno- 
 mena, of emissions of vitality, without bond, relation, or 
 continuity ; it is anarchy. The liberty of the one will 
 inevitably clash with the liberty of others ; constant strife 
 will arise between individual and individual, and consequent 
 loss of force, and waste of the productive faculties vouchsafed 
 to us, and which we are bound to regard as sacred. The 
 liberty of all, if ungoverned by any general directing law, 
 will but lead to a state of warfare among men, a warfare 
 rendered all the more cruel and inexorable by the virtual 1 
 equality of the antagonists. 
 
 Men deemed they had found a remedy for these evils 
 tvhen they raised up from the foot of that cross of Christ 
 rv'hich rules above an entire epoch of the world's history, 
 
 triumph in the sphere of reality ; the intellectual evolution of the 
 thought of an epoch, with its material aj>plication ; the ideal conquest, 
 with its practical consequences. 
 
 The positive application of a given term of progress to the different 
 branches of the civil, political, and economic organism, can only bo 
 successfully begun after its moral development in the intellectual 
 sphere is complete. That moral development is the labour of an 
 epoch, and no sooner is it complete than a power — either individual 
 or people — arises to proclaim its results and consign its formula to the 
 keeping of the nations. A new epoch then begins, in which — while 
 the intellect of humanity is occupied with the newly-revealed term — 
 the term of the past and exhausted epoch is by degrees practically 
 realised and applied. The thought of one epoch is only verified in 
 the sphere of action, when the human intellect is already absorbed in 
 the contemplation of the thought of its successor. Were it not so, the 
 connection and coherence of the epochs would be interrupted, and a 
 solution of continuity would take place. 
 
 Now, I affirm, that if the material application of the terms liberty 
 and equality has not been attained — nor will be until a people have
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. . 2 g 
 
 the formula of fraternity bestowed by the god-like man 
 upon the human race ; that sublime formula, unknown to 
 the pagan world, but for which the Christian world had — ■ 
 often unconsciously — fought many a holy fight from the 
 Crusades to Lepanto. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, 
 inscribed upon every banner, became the programme of the 
 future, and men attempted to confine progress within the 
 circle marked out by those three points. But progress broke 
 through the circle ; the eternal cui bono reappeared. For 
 we, all of us, demanded an aim, a human aim. What is 
 existence other than an aim, and the means of an achieve- 
 ment 1 Now fraternity does not supply any general social 
 terrestrial aim ; it does not even imply the necessity of an 
 aim. It has no essential and inevitable relation with a 
 purpose or intent calculated to harmonise the sum of human 
 faculties and forces. Fraternity is undoubtedly the basis 
 of all society, the first condition of social progress, but it is 
 
 indicated a new term as the aim .of the general endeavour — their moral 
 development is complete. I affirm that the unknown quantity of the 
 middle ages is transferred to the member of the equation containing 
 the known quantities : the hypothesis of the middle ages is the prin- 
 ciple of the present day ; the idea of the middle ages is now a 
 recognised admitted law. Does any one now deny liberty and equality 
 in principle ? Does any one attempt to raise doubts as to the theory 
 of rights ? The most illiberal monarch living fails not to invoke the 
 name of that liberty ho secretly abhors ; to assert that he is the 
 protector of the rights and liberties of his subjects against the anarchy 
 of factions. The question is, in the sphere of principles, decided. 
 The only struggle is as to the application. The dispute no longer 
 regards the law itself, but its interpretation. 
 
 The individual is no longer the aim of human endeavour. The 
 individual will reappear in now sacredness, when, by the promulgation 
 of the social law, the rights and duties of individual existence are 
 made to harmonise with that law. Hitherto the worship accorded to 
 individuality has given rise to an ignoble individualism, a nameless 
 egotism and immorality.
 
 30 MAZZINI. 
 
 not progress; it renders it possible — it is an indispensable 
 element of it — but it is not its definition. Fraternity is 
 not inconsistent with the theory of movement in a circle. 
 And the human mind began to understand these things ; 
 began to perceive that fraternity, though a necessary link 
 between the terms liberty and equality — which sum up the 
 individual synthesis — does not pass beyond that synthesis; 
 that its action is limited to the action of individual upon 
 individual, that it might be denominated charity, and that 
 though it may constitute a starting-point whence humanity 
 advances in search of a social synthesis, it may not be 
 substituted for that synthesis. 
 
 This being understood, human research recommenced , 
 men began to perceive that the aim, the function of exist- 
 ence, must also be the ultimate term of that progressive 
 development which constitutes existence itself ; and that, 
 therefore, in order to advance rapidly and directly towards 
 that aim, it was first necessary to determine with exacti- 
 tude the nature of that progressive development, and to 
 act in accordance with it. To know the Law, and regulate 
 human activity to the Law : such is the best mode of 
 stating the problem. 
 
 Now the law of the individual can only be deduced from 
 the law of the species. The individual mission can only be 
 ascertained and defined by placing ourselves upon an 
 elevation, enabling us to grasp and comprehend the whole. 
 We must reascend to the conception of Humanity, in order 
 to ascertain the secret, rule, and law of life of the indi- 
 vidual, of man. Hence the necessity of a general co- 
 operation, of harmony of effort, — in a word, of association, 
 — in order to fulfil the work of all.* 
 
 * "Association," I am sometimes told, " is no new principle. By 
 prefixing it as the universal aim, you therefore neither create a new
 
 FAITH AND THE FU1URE. 31 
 
 Hence also the necessity of a complete alteration in the 
 organisation of the revolutionary party, in our theories of 
 government, and in our philosophical, political, and econom- 
 ical studies ; all of which have hitherto been inspired 
 solely by the principle of liberty. The sacred word 
 Humanity, pronounced with a new meaning, has opened 
 up a new world before the eye of genius — a new world as 
 yet only forefelt — and commenced a new epoch. 
 
 synthesis, nor the necessity for one. Association is only a method, a 
 means of realising liberty and equality : it is a part of tlio old 
 synthesis, nor do we see the necessity for a new one." 
 
 I admit that association, in the usual acceptation of the word, is 
 nothing more than the method of progress, the means by which pro- 
 gress i3 gradually accomplished. With every step in advance, 
 association gains a corresponding degree of power and extension, and 
 in this sense the tendency to association may be said to be contem- 
 porary with that progress, initiated — in regard to man — with the 
 earliest existence of our planet. It has exercised an action in all tho 
 syntheses now exhausted, and will exercise still greater influence in 
 the synthesis we seek to enthrone. But although its action always 
 existed, mankind were unconscious of it, and influenced by it without 
 being themselves aware of it. Such has been the case with progress 
 itself, with the law of gravity, with all great moral and physical 
 truths. Their action existed long before it was revealed to us. 
 
 But is not the difference between a law unknown, and a law 
 declared, promulgated, and accepted, sufficient to constitute a new 
 starting-point for the activity of the human intellect ? The law once 
 defined, the regulation of our action by it becomes a duty : its 
 fulfilment becomes the aim of all human endeavour, and the method 
 of deriving the maximum of utility from its fulfilment becomes tho 
 study of every thinker. The human intellect no longer wastes 
 precious time in researches, the object of which has been realised. 
 Power is increased a hundred-fold when it is concentrated, and a 
 definite direction is given to its action. Previously to the promulga- 
 tion of tho law, the mere instinctive sense of its existence could do no 
 more than constitute a right, and a right almost always contested. 
 
 Great historical epochs do not date from the existence of a law, a 
 truth, or a principle ; but from the time of their promulgation. Were
 
 32 MAZZINI. 
 
 Is any book required to prove this 1 or is a longer 
 explanation and development of the subject necessary in 
 order to prove that such is indeed the actual intellectual 
 movement, and that the labour and business of the age is 
 the discovery of its own synthesis 1 Have not all our 
 schools of philosophy for the last twenty years — even when 
 abandoning the true path, and returning to the past — ■ 
 been seeking the great unknown quantity 1 Do not even 
 
 it not so, it would be idle to speak of distinct epochs or syntheses : 
 truth is one, and eternal ; and the thought of God, in which was the 
 germ of the world, contained them all. 
 
 Equality existed as a principle long before Jesus, and the world was 
 unconsciously tending towards it. Why then admit the existence of 
 a Christian epoch ? 
 
 The earth described its revolutions round the sun without awaiting 
 the revelations of Copernicus and Galileo, or the Newtonian formulas. 
 Why then do we make distinct astronomical epochs of the systems of 
 Ptolemy and Newton ? 
 
 And in days nearer our own, do not the theories of the English 
 school of economists, and those (too soon forgotten) of the Saint 
 Simonians, constitute two distinct periods of economical science ? 
 Yet the substitution of the principle of association for that of liberty 
 is nevertheless the sole difference between the one and the other. 
 
 Now I believe that the time has arrived when the principle of 
 association, solemnly and universally promulgated, should become 
 the starting-point of all theoretical and practical studies, having for 
 their aim the progressive organisation of human society, and bo 
 placed at the summit of our constitutions, our codes, and our formulas 
 of faith. And I say, moreover, that the promulgation of a terra 
 directing our researches upon a path absolutely different from any 
 yet tried, is sufficient to constitute, or at least to indicate, a new 
 epoch. 
 
 Eor the rest, ours is not a formula of association only ; it is — 
 Europe, and, through its means, humanity, associated in the 
 completeness of all its faculties and all its forces, under the indispens- 
 able conditions of liberty, equality, and fraternity, for the realisation 
 of a common aim, the discovery and progressive application of its law 
 of life.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 33 
 
 those whose interest it is to lead the human mind away 
 from that search confess this? Our Catholicism of the 
 present day seeks to reconcile Gregory VII. and Luther ; 
 the Papacy with the freedom and independence of the 
 human spirit. . . . And we daily hear the word humanity 
 proffered by the lips of materialists who are incapable of 
 appreciating its meaning, and ever and anon betray their 
 natural tendencies to the individualism of the empire. 
 Whether as a real belief or as an enforced homage, the new 
 epoch obtains its due acknowledgment from intellect almost 
 without exception. 
 
 Some of the more fervid apostles of progress lamented a 
 short time ago that our enemies pirated our words without 
 even understanding their meaning. But the complaint is 
 puerile. It is precisely in such agreement, instructive or 
 compulsory though it be, that we trace a visible sign of the 
 Word of the New Epoch, Humanity. 
 
 Every epoch has a faith of its own. Every synthesis 
 contains the idea of an aim, of a mission. And every 
 mission has its special instrument, its special forces, and its 
 special lever of action. He who should attempt to realise 
 the mission of a given epoch with the instrument of another, 
 would have to pass through an indefinite series of ineffica- 
 cious endeavours. Overcome by the want of analogy 
 between the means and the end, he might become a martyr, 
 never a victor. 
 
 Such is the point to which we have arrived. We all 
 feel, both in heart and brain, the presentiment of a great 
 epoch ; and we have sought to make of the negations and 
 analyses with which the eighteenth century was compelled 
 to surround its newly-acquired victory, the banner of the 
 faith of that epoch. Inspired by God to utter the sublime 
 words — regeneration, progress, new mission, the future — ■ 
 
 33 s
 
 34 MAZZINI. 
 
 we yet persist in striving to realise the material triumph of 
 the programme contained in those words, with the instru- 
 ment that served for the realisation of a mission now 
 concluded. We invoke a social world, a vast harmonious 
 organisation of the forces existing in undirected activity in 
 that vast laboratory, the earth ; — and in order to call this 
 new world into existence, and to lay the foundation of a 
 pacific organisation, we have recourse to those old habits of 
 rebellion which consume our forces within the circle of 
 individualism. We proclaim the future from the midst of 
 ruins. Prisoners, whose chain had but been lengthened, 
 we boasted ourselves emancipated and free because wo 
 found ourselves able to move around the column to which 
 we were bound. 
 
 It is for this that faith slumbers in the heart of the 
 peoples : for this that the blood of an entire nation fails to 
 rekindle it. 
 
 * « « 
 
 FAiTn requires an aim capable of embracing life as a whole, 
 of concentrating all its manifestations, of directing its 
 various modes of activity, or of repressing them all in 
 favour of one alone. It requires an earnest, unalterable 
 conviction that that aim will be realised ; a profound 
 belief in a mission, and the obligation to fulfil it ; and the 
 consciousness of a supreme power watching over the path 
 of the faithful towards its accomplishment. These elements 
 are indispensable to faith ; and where any one of these 
 is wanting, we shall have sects, schools, political parties, 
 but no faith ; no constant hourly sacrifice for the sake of a 
 great religious idea. 
 
 Now we have no definite religious idea, no profound
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 35 
 
 belief in an obligation entailed by a mission, no conscious- 
 ness of a supreme protecting power. Our actual apostolate 
 is a mere analytical opposition ; our weapons are interests, 
 and cur chief instrument of action is a theory of rights. 
 We are, all of us, notwithstanding our sublime presenti- 
 ments, the sons of rebellion. We advance, like renegades, 
 without a God, without a law, without a banner to lead us 
 towards the future. Our former aim has vanished from 
 our view ; the new, dimly seen for an instant, is effaced by 
 that doctrine of rights which alone directs our labours. 
 We make of the individual both the means and the aim. 
 We talk of Humanity — a formula essentially religious — 
 and banish religion from our work. We talk of synthesis, 
 and yet neglect the most powerful and active element of 
 human existence. Bold enough to be undaunted by the 
 dream of the material unity of Europe, we thoughtlessly 
 destroy its moral unity by failing to recognise the primary 
 condition of all association, — uniformity of sanction and 
 belief. And it is amidst such contradictions that we 
 pretend to renew a world. 
 
 I do not exaggerate. I know there are exceptions, and I 
 admire them. But the mass of our party is as I describe 
 it. Its presentiments and desires belong to the new epoch ■ 
 the character of its organisation, and the means of which it 
 seeks to avail itself, belong to the old. The party has long 
 had an instinctive sense of a great mission confided to it ; 
 but it neither understands the true nature of that mission 
 or the instruments fitted to achieve it. It is therefore 
 incapable of success, and will remain so until it compre- 
 hends that the cry of "God wills it" must be the eternal 
 watchword of every undertaking like our own, having 
 sacrifice for its basis, the people for its instrument, and 
 Humanity for its aim.
 
 36 MAZZINL 
 
 What ! you complain that faith is dead or dying, that 
 the souls of men are withered by the breath of egotism, and 
 yet you scorn all belief, and proclaim in your writings that 
 religion is no more ; that its day is over, and that there is 
 no religious future for the peoples ! 
 
 You marvel at the slow advance of the peoples on the 
 path of sacrifice and association, and yet you propose to 
 them a programme of individuality, the sole value of which 
 is negative ; the result of which is a method, not of 
 organisation, but of juxtaposition, which, if analysed, will 
 be found to be nothing more than egotism wrapped in a 
 mantle of philosophic formulse ! 
 
 You seek to perform a work of regeneration, and, — 
 since without this all political organisation is fruitless — of 
 moral personal amelioration; and you hope to accomplish 
 it by banishing every religious idea from your work ! 
 
 Politics merely accept man as he is, in his actual position 
 and character ; define his tendencies, and regulate his 
 action in harmony with them. The religious idea alone has 
 power to transform both. 
 
 The religious idea is the very breath of Humanity ; its 
 life, soul, conscience, and manifestation. Humanity only 
 exists in the consciousness of its origin and the presentiment 
 of its destiny ; and only reveals itself by concentrating its 
 powers upon some one of the intermediate points between 
 these two. Now this is precisely the function of the 
 religious idea. That idea constitutes a faith in an origin 
 common to us all ; sets before us, as a principle, a common 
 future ; unites all the active faculties on one sole centre, 
 whence they are continuously evolved and developed in the 
 direction of that future, and guides the latent forces of tho 
 human mind towards it. It lays hold of life in its every 
 aspect, and in its slightest manifestations ; utters its augury
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 37 
 
 over the cradle and the tomb, and affords — philosophically 
 speaking — at once the highest and the most universal 
 formula of a given epoch of civilisation ; the most simple 
 and comprehensive expression of its knowledge, (scientia) ; 
 the ruling synthesis by which it is governed as a whole, and 
 by which its successive evolutions are directed from on high. 
 
 Viewed with regard to the individual, the religious con- 
 ception is the sign of the relation existing between him and 
 the epoch to which he belongs ; the revelation of his 
 function and rule of life ; the device beneath which he 
 fulfils it. That conception elevates and purifies the 
 individual, and destroys egotism within him by transport- 
 ing the centre of activity from the inward to the outward. 
 It has created for man that theory of duty which is the 
 parent of sacrifice ; which has inspired, and ever will 
 inspire, him to high and holy things ; the sublime theory 
 which brings man nearer to God, lends to the human crea- 
 ture a spark of omnipotence, overleaps every obstacle, and 
 converts the scaffold of the martyr into a ladder of triumph. 
 It is as far above the narrow and imperfect theory of 
 rights as the law itself is above any one of its consequences.* 
 
 Right is the faith of the individual. Duty is the com- 
 mon collective faith. Bight can but organise resistance : 
 it may destroy, it cannot found. Duty builds up, asso- 
 ciates, and unites ; it is derived from a general law, whereas 
 
 * The theory of rights is visibly a secondary idea, a deduction, 
 which has lost sight of the principlo from which it sprang ; a con- 
 sequence which has been elevated into an absolute doctrine, and 
 granted a life of its own. 
 
 Every right exists in virtue of a law ; the law of the Being, the law 
 which defines the nature of the subject in question. What is the 
 law ? I know not : its discovery is the aim of the actual epoch ; but 
 the certainty that such a law exists is sufficient to necessitate the 
 substitution of the idea of Duty for the idea of Bight.
 
 33 MAZZTNI. 
 
 Right is derived only from human will. There is nothing 
 therefore to forbid a struggle against Right : any indi- 
 vidual may rebel against any right in another which is 
 injurious to him ; and the sole judge left between the 
 adversaries is Force ; and such, in fact, has frequently been 
 the answer which societies based upon right have given to 
 their opponents. 
 
 Societies based upon Duty would not be compelled to 
 have recourse to force ; duty, once admitted as the rule, 
 excludes the possibility of struggle ; and by rendering the 
 individual subject to the general aim, it cuts at the very 
 root of those evils which Right is unable to prevent, and 
 only affects to cure. Moreover, progress is not a necessary 
 result of the doctrine of Right, it merely admits it as a 
 fact. The exercise of rights being of necessity limited by 
 capacity, progress is abandoned to the arbitrary rule of an 
 unregulated and aimless liberty. 
 
 The doctrine of Rights puts an end to sacrifice, and 
 cancels martyrdom from the world : in every theory of 
 individual rights, interests become the governing and motive 
 power, and martyrdom an absurdity, for what interest can 
 endure beyond the tomb ? Yet, how often has martyrdom 
 been the initiation of progress, the baptism of a world ! 
 
 Every doctrine not based upon Progress considered as a 
 necessary law is inferior to the idea and the demands of 
 the epoch. Yet the doctrine of rights still rules us with 
 sovereign sway ; rules even that republican party which 
 assumes to be the party of progress and initiation in 
 Europe ; and the liberty of the republicans — although they 
 instinctively proffer the words duty, sacrifice, and mission 
 — is still a theory of resistance ; their religion — if indeed 
 they speak of any — a formula of the relation between God 
 and the individual ; the political organisation they invoke
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. yj 
 
 and dignify by the name of social, a mere series of defences 
 raised up around laws framed to secure the liberty of each 
 to follow out his oivn aim, his own tendencies, and his own 
 interests ; their definition of the Law does not go beyond 
 the expression of the general will; their formula of associa- 
 tion is society founded on Rights ; their faith does not 
 overpass the limits traced out nearly a century ago by a 
 man — himself the incarnation of struggle — in a declaration 
 of rights. Their theories of government are theories of 
 distrust ; their organic problem, a remnant of patched-up 
 Constitutionalism, reduces itself to the discovery of a point 
 around which individuality and association, liberty and 
 law, may oscillate for ever in resultless hostility ; their 
 people is too often a caste — the most useful and numerous, 
 it is true — in open rebellion against other castes, and seek- 
 ing to enjoy in its turn the rights given by God to all ; 
 their republic is the turbulent, intolerant democracy of 
 Athens;* their war-cry a cry of vengeance, and their 
 symbol Spartacus. 
 
 Now this is the eighteenth century over again — its 
 philosophy ; its human synthesis ; its materialist policy ; 
 its spirit of analysis and Protestant criticism ; its sover- 
 
 * The word democracy, although it expresses energetically and 
 with historical precision the secret of the ancient world, is — like all 
 the political phrases of antiquity — below the conception of the future 
 Epoch which we republicans are bound to initiate. The expression 
 Social Government would be preferable as indicative of the idea of 
 association, which is the life of the Epoch. The word democracy was 
 inspired by an idea of rebellion, sacred at the time, but still rebellion. 
 Now every such idea is imperfect, and inferior to the idea of unity 
 which will be the dogma of the future. Democracy is suggestive of 
 struggle ; it is the cry of Spartacus, the expression and manifestation 
 of a people in its first arising. Government — the social institution — 
 reproseuts a people triumphant; a peoplo that constitutes itself. The 
 gradual extinction of aristocracy will cancel the word democracy.
 
 40 MAZZINI. 
 
 eignty of the individual ; its negation of an ancient 
 religious formula ; its distrust of all authority ; its spirit of 
 emancipation and resistance. It is the French Revolution 
 over again ; the past, with the additions of a few presenti- 
 ments ; servitude to old things surrounded with a prestigo 
 of youth and novelty. 
 
 « * » 
 
 The past is fatal to our party. The French Revolution— 
 I say it with deep conviction — crushes us. It weighs like 
 an incubus upon our hearts, and forbids them to beat. 
 Dazzled by the grandeur of that titanic struggle, we pros- 
 trate ourselves before it even yet. We expect its 
 programme to furnish us with both men and things ; we 
 strive to copy Robespierre and St. Just, and search the 
 records of the Clubs of 1791 and 1793 for titles to give to 
 the sections of 1833 and 1834. But while we thus ape our 
 fathers, we forget that their greatness consisted in the fact 
 that they aped no one. They derived their inspiration 
 from contemporary sources, from the wants of the masses, 
 from the elements by which they were surrounded. And it 
 was precisely because the instruments they used Avere 
 adapted to the aim they had in view that they achieved 
 miracles. 
 
 Why should we not do as they have done ? Why, while 
 we study and respect tradition, should we not advance ? It 
 is our duty to venerate our fathers' greatness, and to 
 demand of their sepulchres a pledge of the future, but not 
 the future itself ; God alone, the Father of all revelations 
 and of all epochs, can direct us upon its boundless path. 
 
 Let us arise, therefore, and endeavour to be great in our 
 turn. To be so, we must comprehend our mission in all its
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 41 
 
 completeness. We — the men of the present — are standing 
 between two epochs ; between the tomb of one world and 
 the cradle of another ; between the boundary-line of the 
 individual synthesis and the confines of the synthesis 
 Humanity. What we have to do is to fix our eyes upon 
 the future while we break the last links of the chain that 
 binds us to the past, and deliberately advance. We have 
 emancipated ourselves from the abuses of the past ; let us 
 now emancipate ourselves from its glories. The eighteenth 
 century has done its work. Our forefathers sleep proudly 
 and calmly in their tombs : they repose, wrapped in their 
 flacr, like warriors after a battle. Fear not to offend them. 
 Their banner, dyed red in the blood of Christ, transmitted 
 by Luther to the Convention, to be raised upon the corpses 
 of those slain in the battles of the peoples, is a sacred 
 legacy to us all. None will venture to lay hands upon it ; 
 and we will return hereafter and lay at its foot, where our 
 fathers lie buried, the laurels we have won in turn. 
 
 Our present duty is to found the policy of the nineteenth 
 century ; to re-ascend, through philosophy, to faith ; to 
 define and organise association ; to proclaim Humanity; to 
 initiate a new epoch. Upon that initiation does the 
 material realisation of the past epoch depend. 
 
 These things are not new. I know it, and confess it 
 gladly. My voice is but one among many that have 
 announced nearly the same ideas ; affirming that associa- 
 tion is the fundamental principle by which our political 
 labours should henceforth be directed. Many great men 
 have condemned the exclusive worship of the doctrine of 
 Rights, the ultimate formula of individuality now degen- 
 erating into materialism : many schools, both past and 
 present, have invoked Duty, as the anchor of salvation for 
 society tormented by inefficacious aspirations.
 
 42 MAZZINI. 
 
 Why then do I insist so much upon their want of 
 foresight? What matters it whether they preach the 
 adoption of this term as the centre of a new programme, 
 or only as a development of the old ? So long as they join 
 with us in crying forward ! what matters it that they 
 persist in confounding association with fraternity; or 
 Humanity — the complex unity of all the human faculties 
 organised in the pursuit of the same aim — with the liberty 
 and equality of all men 1 Wherefore, by promulgating the 
 idea of a new epoch, create a new enterprise and 
 consequently new difficulties ? 
 
 Is our question, then, a mere question of words alone ? 
 
 I do not think so. 
 
 It is important to affirm the new epoch : to affirm that 
 what we now preach is, in fact, a new programme ; and this 
 for a reason that should be universally recognised and 
 admitted. The desire not merely to think but to act. We 
 are seeking not merely the emancipation of a people, but 
 the emancipation of the peoples. 
 
 Now the true emancipation of the peoples can only be 
 effected through the conscience of the peoples. They will 
 not act efficaciously until they recognise a newly-revealed 
 aim, for the realisation of which the labour of all, the 
 equality of all, and an initiative, are required. Until they 
 arrive at the recognition of such an aim, there is no hope of 
 faith, sacrifice, or active enthusiasm from them. They will 
 remain inert ; and, dominated by the prestige of the 
 previous initiative, they will leave the duty of realising and 
 exhausting its consequences to that people, who, by assuming 
 the glory of the initiative, rendered themselves responsible 
 for its fulfilment. 
 
 They will be content to follow slowly in their footsteps, 
 but do no more. And if, for reasons to them unknown,
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 43 
 
 that people should stop short upon the way, they will stop 
 short also. Silence, inaction, and suspension of life will 
 follow. Such is the spectacle presented by Europe at the 
 present clay. 
 
 The idea of a new epoch, by implying a new aim to bo 
 reached, leaves the initiative to the future, and thereby 
 awakens the general conscience to activity. It substitutes 
 spontaneity for imitation ; the achievement of a special 
 mission for the mere performance of an executive part in 
 the mission of others; Europe for France. We thus 
 furnish a new element of revolutionary activity. 
 
 By the affirmation of a new epoch, we affirm tho 
 existence of a new synthesis ; a general idea destined to 
 embrace all the terms of the anterior synthesis, plus one ; 
 and starting from that new term to co-ordinate all the 
 historical series, all the facts, all the manifestations of life, 
 all the aspects of the human problem, all the branches of 
 human knowledge that are ranged beneath it. We give 
 a new and fruitful impulse to the labours of intelligence; 
 we proclaim the necessity for a new encyclopedia, 
 which, by summing up and comprehending all the progress 
 achieved, would constitute a new progress in itself. We 
 place beyond all controversy, in the rank of ascertained 
 truths, all the terms which have been the aim of past 
 revolutions, — the liberty, equality, and fraternity of men 
 and of peoples. We separate ourselves for ever from 
 the epoch of exclusive individuality, and, still more 
 decisively therefore, from that individualism which is the 
 materialism of that epoch. We close up the paths to 
 the past. 
 
 And finally, by that affirmation we reject every doctrine of 
 eclecticism and transition ; every imperfect formula contain- 
 ing the statement of a problem without any attempt to
 
 44 MAZZINL 
 
 solve it ; every school seeking to conjoin life and death, and 
 to renew the world through the medium of an extinct 
 synthesis. 
 
 By the very character of the epoch we proclaim, wo 
 furnish a new basis to the principle of universal suffrage ; wo 
 elevate the political question to the height of a philosophi- 
 cal conception ; we substitute an apostolate of Humanity by 
 asserting that common law of nations which should be the 
 sign of our faith. We consecrate those sudden, spontaneous, 
 collective movements of the people which will initiate and 
 translate the new synthesis in action. We lay the founda- 
 tions of an humanitarian faith, to the height of which the 
 republican party must elevate itself in order to succeed. 
 For every epoch has its baptism of faith : our epoch lacks 
 that baptism as yet, but we can at least make ourselves its 
 precursors. 
 
 * * # 
 
 Ours is then no idle contest of words alone. Upon the 
 direction now chosen by the party, I believe, depends the 
 success or failure of the cause we sustain. It was as a 
 political party that we fell. It is as a religious party that 
 we must rise again. The religious element is universal, 
 immortal : it both universalises and unites. Every great 
 revolution has borne its stamp, and revealed it in its origin 
 or in its aim. Through it is association founded. The 
 initiators of a new woi'ld, we are bound to lay the founda- 
 tions of a moral unity, an humanitarian Catholicism. 
 
 We advance, encouraged by the sacred promise of Jesus ; 
 we seek the new gospel, of which, before dying, he gave us 
 the immortal hope, and of which the Christian gospel is but 
 the germ, even as man is the germ of Humanity.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 45 
 
 Upon the soil rendered fruitful by the blood of fifty 
 generations of martyrs, we stand with Lessing to hail the 
 gigantic future, wherein the lever of action shall rest upon 
 the fatherland as its fulcrum, with Humanity for its scopo 
 and aim ; wherein the peoples shall bind themselves in a 
 common pact, and meet in brotherhood to define the future 
 mission of each, the function of each in the general 
 association, governed by one Law for all, one God for all. 
 
 It is our part to hasten the moment when revolution, the 
 alarum of the peoples, shall summon a convention which 
 shall be a council-general in truth. Our war must therefore 
 be a holy war ; a crusade. The name of God must bo 
 inscribed upon our banner and govern our actions. Upon 
 the ruins of the old world a new territory will arise, 
 whereon the peoples shall burn the incense of reconciliation. 
 And may each of us be able to answer, when asked: Whence 
 come you ? In the name of whom do you preach 1 
 
 I have frequently heard these questions asked. It has 
 been frequently affirmed of our little nucleus of apostolate, 
 that we republicans lack a philosophical origin, an incontro- 
 vertible principle, as the source of our belief. It is worthy 
 of note, that they who make this accusation are men who 
 believe themselves possessed of a philosophy, because some 
 of their followers have made a collection of philosophies ; a 
 religion, because they have priests ; a political doctrine, 
 because they have grapeshot and spies. Nevertheless, the 
 cry has been taken up by men of good faith, who could not 
 fail to observe the want of unity visible in our ranks ; tho 
 absence of a harmonising synthesis and religious belief, not 
 easily reconciled with that social and religious aim tho 
 republicans continually profess. . 
 
 Now we can answer ; 
 
 We come in the name of God and Humanity.
 
 46 MA7.ZINI. 
 
 We believe in one God ; the author of all existence ; the 
 absolute living Thought, of whom our world is a ray, the 
 universe an incarnation. 
 
 We believe in a general, immutable law : a law which 
 constitutes our mode of existence ; embraces the whole 
 scries of possible phenomena ; exercises a continuous action 
 upon the universe, and all therein comprehended, but in its 
 physical and moral aspect. 
 
 As every law assumes an aim to be reached, we believe in 
 the progressive development of the faculties and forces — 
 faculties in action — of all living things towards that 
 unknown aim. Were this not so, the law would be useless, 
 and existence unintelligible. 
 
 Every law being interpreted and verified by its subject,, 
 we believe in Humanity — the collective and continuous 
 Being that sums up and comprehends the ascending series 
 of organic creations ; the most perfect manifestation of the 
 thought of God upon our globe — as the sole interpreter of 
 the law. 
 
 We believe that harmony between the subject and the 
 law being the condition of all normal existence, — the known 
 and immediate aim of all endeavour is the establishment of 
 this harmony in ever-increasing completeness and securitj^, 
 through the gradual discovery and comprehension of the 
 law, and identification of its subject with it. 
 
 We believe in association — which is but the reduction to 
 action of our faith in one sole God, and one sole law, and 
 one sole aim — as the only means we possess of realising the 
 truth ; as the method of progress ; the path leading towards 
 perfection. The highest possible degree of human progress 
 will correspond to the discovery and application of the 
 vastest formula of association. 
 
 We believe, therefore, in the Holy Alliance of the
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 47 
 
 Peoples as being the vastest formula of association possible 
 in our epoch ; — in the liberty and equality of the peoples, 
 without which no true association can exist ; — in nation- 
 ality, which is the conscience of the peoples, and which, by 
 assigning to them their part in the work of association, 
 their function in humanity, constitutes their mission upon 
 earth, that is to say, their individuality ; without which 
 neither liberty nor equality are possible ; — in the sacred 
 Fatherland, cradle of nationality ; altar and workshop of 
 the individuals of which each people is composed. 
 
 And since the law is one ; since it governs alike the two 
 aspects, internal and external, of the life of each being ; 
 the two modes — personal and relative — subjective and objec- 
 tive — of every existence, — we hold the same creed with 
 regard to each people, and the individuals of which it is 
 composed, that we hold with regard to humanity, and the 
 nations of which it is composed. 
 
 As we believe in the association of the peoples, so do wo 
 believe in the association of the individuals of which each 
 people is composed : we believe that it is their sole method 
 of progress, the principle destined to predominate over all 
 their institutions, and the pledge of their harmony of 
 action. 
 
 As we believe in the liberty and equality of the peoples, 
 so do we believe in the liberty and equality of the men of 
 every people, and in the inviolability of the human Ego, 
 which is the conscience of the individual, and assigns to 
 him his part in the second aiy association ; his function 
 in the nation, his special mission of citizenship with the 
 sphere of the Fatherland. 
 
 And as we believe in Humanity as the sole interpreter 
 of the law of God, so do we believe in the people of every 
 state as the sole master, sole sovereign, and sole interpreter
 
 4§ MAZZWI. 
 
 of the law of humanity, which governs every national 
 mission. We believe in the people, one and indivisible ; 
 recognising neither castes nor privileges, save those of 
 genius and virtue ; neither proletariat nor aristocracy, 
 whether landed or financial ; but simply an aggregate 
 of faculties and forces consecrated to the well-being of all, 
 to the administration of the common substance and posses- 
 sion, the terrestrial globe. We believe in the people, one 
 and independent; so organised as to harmonise the indi- 
 vidual faculties with the social idea ; living by the fruits of 
 its own labour, united in seeking after the greatest possiblo 
 amount of general well-being, and in respect for the rights of 
 individuals. We believe in the people bound together in 
 brotherhood by a common faith, tradition, and idea of love ; 
 striving towards the progressive fulfilment of its special 
 mission ; consecrated to an apostolate of duties ; never 
 forgetful of a truth once attained, but never sinking into 
 inertness in consequence of its attainment ; revering the 
 Word of past generations, yet bent on using the present as 
 a bridge between the past and the future ; adoring revela- 
 tions rather than revealers, and capable of the gradual 
 solution of the problem of its destiny on earth. 
 
 God and his law ; Humanity and its work of interpreta- 
 tion, progress, association, liberty, and equality ; — these, 
 with that dogma of the People, which is the vital principle 
 of the republican party, are all united in our belief.* No 
 achievement of the past is rejected. Before us is the 
 
 * This is not an exposition of doctrine, but a series of bases 
 of belief, disjointed, it is true, and only affirmed ; but yet con- 
 taining enough to show our philosophical and religious conception. 
 Our political creed is composed of the consequences, more or less 
 evident and direct, of that conception. It may easily be understood 
 how the mere fact of the affirmation of a new epoch and a new
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 49 
 
 evolution of a future in which the two eternal elements of 
 every organisation — the individual and humanity, liberty 
 and association — will be harmonised ; in which one whole 
 synthesis, a veritable religious formula, will — without sup- 
 pressing any in favour of the rest — embrace all the revela- 
 tions of progress, all the holy ideas that have been 
 successively transmitted to us by providential design. 
 
 " When, in the presence of the Young Europe now 
 arising, all the altars of the old world shall be overthrown, 
 two new altars will be raised upon the soil made fruitful 
 by the divine Word. 
 
 synthesis, removes us from all those who do but regard themselves as 
 contimicrs, so to speak, and who believe that tho initiative belongs to 
 one sole people, the depositaries of tho highest formula of progress 
 hitherto attained. The principlo that tho new synthesis must includo 
 all tho terms of tho anterior synthesis, 2^ us one > is the formal 
 negation of every theory, the tendency of which is to destroy, not to 
 harmonise ; of every political school that merely leads to the substitu- 
 tion of one class for another, one social element for another ; of every 
 exclusive system, which — like that of Babceuf — would cancel liberty in 
 tho namo of somo deceptive chimera of equality ; eliminate tho 
 greatest of moral facts, the Ego, and render all progress impossible. 
 It is equally the negation of that American school, which makes of 
 tho individual tho centre of all things ; resolves every political 
 problem in favour of mere liberty ; crushes the principle of associa- 
 tion beneath the omnipotence of the human Ego ; condemns all 
 progress to be made by fits and starts impossible of calculation ; 
 introduces distrust as an element of the civil organisation ; dis- 
 members the social unity into an independent duality of temporal and 
 spiritual power ; and by its doctrine that the law is Atheist, and its 
 belief in the sovereignty of rights and interests, instils materialism, 
 individualism, egotism, and contradiction into the minds of men. 
 
 Our conception of Humanity as tho sole interpreter of the law of 
 God, separates us from every school which would divide progress into 
 two distinct epochs, and circumscribe it, as it were by force, in one 
 solo determinate synthesis or religion ; that would close up and im- 
 prison tho tradition of humanity within tho doctrine of one solo 
 
 339
 
 5o. MAZZINI. 
 
 " And the hand of the initiator-people shall inscribe upon 
 one the Fatherland, upon the other Humanity. Ag 
 children of the same mother, as brethren gathered together, 
 the peoples shall assemble around those altars, and make 
 sacrifice in peace and love. 
 
 " And the incense of those altars shall ascend to heaven 
 in two columns, which shall gradually approach each other, 
 until they unite on high, in God. 
 
 " And whensoever they shall be divided in their ascent, 
 there shall be fratricide on earth : and mothers shall weep 
 on earth and angels shall weep in heaven."* 
 
 Now suppose that all these things were repeated in 
 
 revealer ; or break the continuity of human work with the doctrine of 
 a periodical intervention from on high, a series of integral renovations 
 absolutely separate and distinct each from the other ; or a series of 
 social formula, each of them the issue of revelation, and separated by 
 an intermediate abyss. 
 
 Our principle of the People, — which is but the application of the 
 dogma of humanity to each nation, — leads us to universal suffrage 
 — the manifestation of the people— as a direct consequence requiring 
 no other authorisation : it implies the exclusion of every undele- 
 gated authority, whether exercised by a man or by a caste. 
 
 The principle of association, considered as the sole means of progress, 
 implies the complete liberty of all special aud secondary associations, 
 formed for any purpose not inconsistent with the moral law. 
 
 The principle of moral unity, without which association is 
 impossible, implies the duty of a general elementary education which 
 shall explain the programme of the association (society) to all its 
 members. And the principle of the inviolability of the individual 
 implies not only the absolute freedom of the press, the abolition of 
 capital punishment and of every form of punishment calculated not to 
 improve but merely to restrain or suppress the individual, but also a 
 complete theory of labour, considered as the manifestation of the 
 individual, and representation and expression of his worth. 
 
 * " Foi de la Jeune Europe." — (Unpublished.)
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 51 
 
 Europe, not as the more expression of an individual holier, 
 hut as the Word, the conscience of the entire party of pro- 
 gress — suppose that the religious principle should onco 
 again illumine our path and unify our labours — suppose 
 that the words God and Humanity were united in our 
 popular symbol as the object and its image, the idea and 
 the form ; — think you that our words would fail to rouso 
 the suffering multitudes that will but wait and hope and 
 pray until the religious cry of the Crusades — "God wills 
 it " — be sounded in their ears % Think you that between 
 our Holy Alliance and the accursed Pact so called ; 
 between the apostles of free and progressive movement, 
 and the inert sophists of old Europe, — they would fail to 
 recognise which side was with God, with his Law, his 
 Truth? 
 
 Whereso God is, there is the people. 
 
 The instinctive philosophy of the people is Faith in Him. 
 
 And when that faith shall be not only upon your lips 
 but in your hearts ; when your acts shall correspond to 
 your words, and virtue shall sanctify your life, as liberty 
 has sanctified your intelligence ; when united, brothers and 
 believers, and rallied round one sole banner, you appear 
 before mankind as seekers after Good, and they say of you 
 amongst themselves : These men are a living religion — 
 think you your appeal to the peoples will not meet with a 
 ready response ? think you that the palm of that European 
 initiative, sought for by all and destined to benefit all, 
 would not speedily be gathered 1 
 
 Great ideas create great peoples. Let your life be the 
 living summary of one sole organic idea. Enlarge the 
 horizon of the peoples. Liberate their conscience from tho 
 materialism by which it is weighed down. Set a vast 
 mission before them. Rebaptise them. Material interests
 
 52 MAZZINI. 
 
 when offended do but produce emeutes ; principles alone 
 can generate revolutions. The question now agitating the 
 world is a religious question. Analysis, and anarchy of 
 religious belief, have extinguished faith in the hearts of the 
 peoples. Synthesis, and unity of religious belief, will 
 rekindle it. 
 
 Then, and then only, will that true energy which gathers 
 new strength amid obstacles take the place of the false 
 energy which sinks under every delusion. Then will cease 
 the disunion and distrust that now torment us, multiplying 
 sects, and hindering association ; making a little centre of 
 every individual ; raising up camps on every side, but 
 giving us no army ; dividing mankind into poets, and men 
 of prose and calculation ; men of action, and men of 
 intellectual speculation. 
 
 Then will disappear from amongst our party that impure 
 and equivocal class which dishonours our ranks, and, by the 
 introduction of a duality between word and action, creates 
 doubts and distrust of our symbol ; which prates of virtue, 
 charity, and sacrifice, with vice in its heart, dishonour on 
 its brow, and egotism in its soul ; which leaves the stigma 
 of its immorality upon our flag ; which hides itself in the 
 day of battle, and reappears when all danger is over, to 
 gather up the spoils of the conquered, and contaminate and 
 destroy the fruits of the victory. 
 
 Then will men's prejudices vanish one by one, and with 
 them the influence of the nameless tribe of the weak and 
 timid who blame our cry of action because themselves 
 deficient in courage ; who implore a little hope for their 
 country as an alms for an embassy, and drag the sacredness 
 of exile through ministerial mud ; who imagine that the 
 salvation of nations may be compassed by diplomatic 
 artifice ; who conspire by apeing the arts and habits of
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 53 
 
 police-agents ; who inock at enthusiasm, deny the power of 
 inspiration and of sacrifice, term martyrdom imprudence, 
 and employ the calculations of arithmetic to solve the 
 prohlem of the regeneration of the peoples. 
 
 Then will the numerous contradictions which render the 
 party inferior to its mission disappear ; the lips of patriots 
 will cease to utter the word foreigner as a term of reproach, 
 which in men calling themselves brothers and republicans is 
 a blasphemy against the cross of Christ. The cowardly 
 hesitation which yet prevents so many from openly confess- 
 ing the faith that is in them, causes them to tremble at 
 the calumnies issuing from the enemy's camp, and covers 
 those who should stand forth as the apostles of truth with a 
 semblance of error and crime, will cease ; as well as the 
 fascination of ancient names substituted for principles, 
 which has been the destruction of so many revolutions by 
 the sacrifice of the new idea to the traditions of the past. 
 The illogical, inconsistent spirit which practically denies 
 human unity by claiming unlimited liberty for the few, 
 with absolute intolerance for the rest, will be overcome ; — 
 the angry polemics nourished by hatred, which attack 
 men instead of things, assume principles only to falsify 
 them in application, betraying every instant a spirit of 
 petty nationalism and jealousy, and wasting energy in 
 insignificant skirmishes, will cease ; and with it our forget- 
 fulness of the martyrs who are our Saints, the great men 
 who are our Priests, the great deeds which are our prayers 
 to God. 
 
 Faith, which is intellect, energy, and love, will put an 
 end to the discords existing in a society which has neither 
 church nor leaders ; which invokes a new world, but forgets 
 to ask its secret, its Word, from God. 
 
 With faith will revive poetry, rendered fruitful by the
 
 54 MAZZINI. 
 
 breath of God, and by a holy creed. Poetry, exiled now 
 from a world of prey to anarchy ; poetry, the flower of the 
 angels, nourished by the blood of martyrs, and watered by 
 the tears of mothers, blossoming often among ruins, but 
 ever coloured by the rays of dawn ; poetry, a language 
 prophetic of Humanity, European in essence, and national in 
 form, will make known to us the fatherland of all the nations 
 hitherto ; translate the religious and social synthesis 
 through art, and render still lovelier by its light, Woman, 
 an angel, fallen, it is true, but yet nearer heaven than we, 
 and hasten her redemption by restoring her to her mission 
 of inspiration, prayer, and pity, so divinely symbolised by 
 Christianity in Mary. 
 
 Poetry will sing to us the joys of martyrdom ; the immor- 
 tality of the vanquished ; the tears that expiate ; the 
 sorrows that purify ; the records, hopes, and traditions of 
 the past world twining around the cradle of the new. It 
 will whisper words of consolation to those children of 
 suffering, sent amongst mankind too soon \ those powerful 
 but doomed souls, who, like Byron, have no confidant on 
 earth, and whom even yet men seek to deprive of their 
 God. Poetry will teach the young the nobleness of sacri- 
 fice, of constancy, and silence ; of feeling oneself alone 
 without despairing, in an existence of suffering unknown 
 or misunderstood ; in long years of bitterness, wounds, and 
 delusion, endured without murmur or lament ; it will teach 
 them to have faith in things to come, and to labour unceas- 
 ingly to hasten their coming, even though without hope of 
 living to witness their triumph. 
 
 Are these illusions 1 Do I presume too far in asking 
 such prodigies of faith in an age still undermined by scep- 
 ticism ; among men still slaves of the Ego, who love little 
 and forget early ; who bear about discouragement in their
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 55 
 
 hearts, and are earnest in nothing save in the calculations 
 of egotism, and the passing pleasures of the hour % 
 
 No : I do not ask too much. It is necessary that these 
 things should be, and they will be. I have faith in God, in 
 the power of truth, and in the historic logic of things. I 
 feel in my inmost heart that the delay is not for long. The 
 principle which was the soul of the old world is exhausted. 
 It is our part to clear the way for the new principle ; and 
 should we perish in the undertaking, it shall yet be 
 cleared. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Tiie sky was dark, the heavens void ; the 'peoples strangely 
 agitated, or motionless in stupor. Whole nations dis- 
 appeared. Others lifted their heads as if to view their fall. 
 Throughout the world was a dull sound of dissolution. All 
 trembled ; the heavens and the earth. Man was hideous 
 to behold. Placed between two infinites, he had no 
 consciousness of either ; neither of his future, nor of his 
 past. All belief was extinct. Man had no faith in his gods, 
 no belief in the republic. Society was no more : there 
 existed a Power stifling itself in blood, or consuming itself 
 in debauchery : a senate, miserably apeing the majesty of 
 the past, that voted millions and statues to the tyrant ; 
 praetorians, who despised the one and slew the other : 
 informers, sophists, and the slavish crowd who clapped their 
 hands. Great principles were no more. Material interests 
 existed still. The fatherland was no more ; the solemn 
 voice of Brutus had proclaimed the death of virtue from its 
 tomb. Good men departed that they might not be defiled 
 by contact with the world. Nerva allowed himself to dio 
 of hunger. Thraseus poured out his blood in libation to
 
 c6 MAZZINI. 
 
 Jupiter the Liberator. The soul of man had fled : the 
 senses reigned alone. The multitude demanded bread and 
 the sports of the circus. Philosophy had sunk first into 
 scepticism, then into epicureanism, then into subtlety and 
 words. Poetry was transformed into satire. 
 
 Yet there were moments when men were terror-struck at 
 the solitude around them, and trembled at their isolation. 
 They ran to embrace the cold and naked statues of their 
 once-venerated gods ; to implore of them a spark of moral 
 life, a ray of faith, even an illusion ! They departed, their 
 prayers unheard, with despair in their hearts and blasphemy 
 upon their lips. Such were the times ; they resembled our 
 own. 
 
 Yet this was not the death agony of the world. It was 
 the conclusion of one evolution of the world which had 
 reached its ultimate expression. A great epoch was ex- 
 hausted, and passing away to give place to another, the 
 first utterances of which had already been heard in the 
 north, and which awaited but the Initiator, to be revealed. 
 
 He came. The soul the most full of love, the most 
 sacredly virtuous, the most deeply inspired by God and the 
 future, that men have yet seen on earth ; Jesus. He bent 
 over the corpse of the dead world, and whispered a word of 
 faith. Over the clay that had lost all of man but the 
 movement and the form, he uttered words until then 
 unknown, Love, Sacrifice, a heavenly origin. And the 
 dead arose. A new life circulated through the clay, which 
 philosophy had tried in vain to reanimate. From that 
 corpse arose the Christian world, the world of liberty and 
 equality. Prom that clay arose the true Man, the image of 
 God, the precursor of Humanity. 
 
 Christ expired. All he had asked of mankind wherewith 
 to save them — says Lamennais — was a cross whereon to die.
 
 FAITH AND THE FUTURE. 57 
 
 But ere he died he had announced the glad tidings to the 
 people. To those who asked of him from whence he had 
 received it, he answered, From God, the Father. From 
 the heijrht of his cross he had invoked him twice. Thereforo 
 upon the cross did his victory begin and still does it endure. 
 
 Have faith, then, O you who suffer for the noble cause ; 
 apostles of a truth which the world of to-day comprehends 
 not ; warriors in the sacred fight whom it yet stigmatises 
 with the name of rebels. To-morrow, perhaps, this world, 
 now incredulous or indifferent, will bow down before you 
 in holy enthusiasm. To-morrow victory will bless the 
 banner of your crusade. Walk in faith and fear not. 
 That which Christ has done, humanity may do. Believe, 
 and you will conquer. Believe, and the peoples at last will 
 follow you. Action is the Word of God ; thought alone is 
 but his shadow. They who disjoin thought and action 
 seek to divide Deity, and deny the eternal Unity. Cast 
 them forth from your ranks, for they who are not ready to 
 bear witness to their faith with their blood are no true 
 believers. 
 
 From your cross of sorrow and persecution proclaim the 
 religion of the epoch. Soon shall it receive the consecra- 
 tion of faith. Let not the hateful cry of reaction be 
 heard on your lips, nor the sombre formula of the con- 
 spirator, but the calm and solemn words of the days to 
 come. From our cross of misery and persecution, we men 
 of exile, the representatives in heart and faith of the 
 enslaved races, of millions of men constrained to silence, 
 will respond to your appeal, and say to our brothers, 
 The alliance is founded. Answer your persecutors with 
 the formula God and the people. They may rebel and 
 blaspheme against it for a while, but it will be accepted 
 and worshipped by the peoples.
 
 5 8 MAZZINI. 
 
 Upon a day in the sixteenth century, at Rome, some 
 men bearing the title of Inquisitors, who assumed to derive 
 wisdom and authority from God himself, were assembled to 
 decree the immobility of the earth. A prisoner stood 
 before them. His brow was illumined by genius. He 
 had outstripped time and mankind, and revealed the 
 secret of a world. 
 
 It was Galileo. 
 
 The old man shook his bold and venerable head. His 
 soul revolted against the absurd violence of those who 
 sought to force him to deny the truths revealed to him by 
 God. But his pristine energy was worn down by long 
 suffering and sorrow ; the monkish menace crushed him. 
 He strove to submit. He raised his hand, he too, to 
 declare the immobility of the earth. But as he raised his 
 hand, he raised his weary eyes to that heaven they had 
 searched throughout long nights to read thereon one line 
 of the universal law ; they encountered a ray of that sun 
 which he so well knew motionless amid the moving spheres. 
 Remorse entered his heart : an involuntary cry burst from 
 the believer's soul : Eppur si muove I and yet it moves. 
 
 Three centuries have passed away. Inquisitors, — inquisi- 
 tion, — absurd theses imposed by force, — all these have 
 disappeared. Naught remains but the well-established 
 movement of the earth, and the sublime cry of Galileo 
 floating above the ages. 
 
 Child of Humanity, raise thy brow to the sun of God, 
 and read upon the heavens : It moves. Faith and action ! 
 The future is ours.
 
 CRITICAL AND LITERARY. 
 
 LAMENNAIS.* 
 
 In 1815 a young foreigner of modest aspect and timid 
 bearing presented himself at the town residence of Lady 
 Jerningham, sister-in-law of Lord Stafford. He went, with 
 an introduction I know not from whom, to seek a humble 
 situation as teacher. He was poor, and poorly dressed. 
 Without even bidding him to be seated, the lady put a few 
 laconic questions to him, and then dismissed him without 
 engaging him ; because — as she told a friend — he looked too 
 stupid. 
 
 That young man was Lamennais. 
 
 Nine years later, in June 1824, a priest, well known to 
 fame through the rapid sale of 40,000 copies of his works, 
 and through the warfare he had carried on against the 
 revolutionary spirit of the age, with an eloquence equal to 
 Bossuet, and learning and logic superior to his, — was 
 travelling, full of fervid faith and hope, from France to 
 Rome, in order to hold a conference with Leo XII. In 
 the Pontiffs chamber the only ornaments he saw were a 
 painting of the Virgin and his own portrait. Leo XII. 
 received him with friendly confidence and admiration. It 
 
 * First published in the Monthly Chronicle, April 1839.
 
 60 MAZZINI. 
 
 was by his advice that Cardinal Lambruschini was appointed 
 to the office of Apostolic Nuncio in France. On every side 
 he was greeted by a chorus of thanks and praise ; which, 
 although it could not dim the limpid and austere intellect 
 of the priest, yet filled his heart with joy ; for he believed it 
 foretold a new epoch of fruitful life for his Church, and 
 hoped that Rome might be inspired by his voice to rise to 
 the height of the grand social mission which his own 
 imagination, and the desires of a generation weary of 
 scepticism and seeking for an aim, had attributed to her. 
 
 That priest was Lamennais. 
 
 Eight years passed away, and the same priest, now sad- 
 dened and oppressed with thought, was once more treading 
 the path to Rome, along with two companions — destined 
 shortly after to forsake him — but who at that time shared 
 his belief, his labours, and . the incomprehensible accusa- 
 tions suddenly cast upon his motives and intentions. He 
 was journeying to explain these, and to justify himself in 
 the eyes of that Authority whose past to him was sacred, 
 whose blessing had hallowed his cradle, and in whose ser- 
 vice he had laboured unceasingly for twenty years. Pure 
 in heart, and led by one of those illusions which naught but 
 the evidence of facts can destroy — too often with the 
 destruction also of one half of the soul — he was on his way 
 to make one last effort to revive that decayed Authority ; 
 to endeavour to infuse one drop of the life-blood of 
 Humanity into its exhausted veins. 
 
 Russian, Prussian, and Austrian notes had preceded him ; 
 demanding from the Pope a formal condemnation of this 
 audacious commentator of St. Paul, who affirmed that 
 wheresoever is the Spirit of God, there is liberty. Cardinal 
 Lambruschini, the same to whom he had himself opened 
 the path to hierarchical power, was adverse to him.
 
 LAME NN A IS. 61 
 
 Gregory XVI. received him coldly, and only upon condition 
 of his remaining silent upon the very subject that had 
 brought him to Rome. A long letter which he addressed 
 to him remained unanswered ; perhaps even unread. 
 
 With a heart full of sorrow and bitterness; having weighed 
 every stone of the ancient edifice, and found naught but 
 dust and ruin, the priest departed. His gaze lingered long 
 on the cupola of St. Peter's ; no longer the sanctuary of the 
 word of God. With a heart swelling with unshed tears — 
 even as one who witnesses the burial of his beloved — he 
 traversed the vast deserted Campagna ; an eloquent image 
 of the solitude daily extending around the Papal See. But 
 he bore his faith with him across the desert, and by that 
 faith he was saved. 
 
 He knew that the Thought of God is immortal, and that 
 although both the direction and the interpreters of the 
 Apostolic mission may be transformed, the mission itself 
 cannot cease throughout the evolution of the centuries, till 
 earth's latest clay. He knew that the decay of a form of 
 authority is naught other than its transmission; and that 
 the death of a form of faith is naught other than its 
 transformation. 
 
 Instead of giving himself up to despair, he meditated 
 upon the new life destined to succeed that life extinct. His 
 eagle glance sounded the heights and depths of the world ; 
 searching out and studying every sign annunciatory of that 
 life to come ; while he prayerfully awaited an inward inspira. 
 tion that should reveal to him the site of the future temple 
 of the Deity. 
 
 One day, when both Rome and the Monarchy believed 
 the man crushed and conquered, he arose, as if called by 
 an irresistible force ; his voice resounded in double power, 
 like the voice of the prophets of old ; and his utterance had
 
 62 MAZZINL 
 
 all the religious solemnity of one who, after long and weary 
 search, has found at length the truth. He preached God, 
 the people, love, and liberty. He proclaimed the downfall 
 of the powers of the day, and called upon the Nations to 
 wrest from their grasp the insignia of the mission they had 
 betrayed. The terrible accuser arose to denounce all that 
 until then he had once defended ; to raise on high all 
 that he had once striven to overthrow. From that time 
 forward he has never changed; nor will he ever change again. 
 It was — for those able to comprehend it — a great lesson. 
 In that struggle of a devout and holy soul, between the re- 
 cords of the past and the previsions of the future ; in that 
 unequal, tempestuous, often wavering, but always progres- 
 sive elevation of a sincere and powerful intellect in search 
 of truth ; in that ultimate, unlooked-for determination — 
 contrasting, to outward appearance, with twenty years of 
 previous labour, — which affixed the seal of religion upon all 
 that the instincts of half-a-century had pointed out, — there 
 was, on the one side, a rare psychological phenomenon, 
 well worthy of study ; and, on the other, a splendid augury 
 and a glorious confirmation of the recent dogma of the 
 sovereignty of the peoples. With a few exceptions, how- 
 ever, the lesson passed unheeded. When they beheld that 
 powerful intellect, which they had supposed exhausted by 
 twenty years of labour, arising giant-like between a world in 
 ruins and a world new born ; when they saw him, as if 
 endowed with a second youth, bound across the abyss that 
 divides the tomb from the cradle, and stand erect upon the 
 soil of the future, — both friends and enemies recoiled in 
 alarm. A wide circle of solitude and silence was formed 
 around him. The first forsook him, as if they felt his 
 unexpected daring a reproof; the last still regarded him 
 with distrust, remembering his past. No sooner had the
 
 LAMENNATS. 63 
 
 upholders of the Papacy recovered themselves, than they 
 hurled every description of calumny and outrage upon him. 
 Forgetting the wide distinction between change the result 
 of progress in ideas, and change the result of lust of wealth 
 and power, they judged him as they might have judged a 
 Thiers or a L'Herminier, attributing his sudden conversion 
 to wounded self-love (precisely as the holy war maintained 
 by Luther against the Papacy was attributed to venal 
 priestly jealousy), and declared (even as others had declared 
 of Luther) that his rebellion might have been prevented by 
 the timely offer of a Cardinal's hat. Saint Paul at Damascus 
 would have been incomprehensible to them. 
 
 In England, prejudice falsified the political opinions of 
 Lamennais ; and the man whom I saw but lately so full of 
 sweetness and love ; who weeps like a child at a symphony 
 of Beethoven ; who will give his last franc to the poor ; 
 who tends flowers like a woman, and steps out of his path 
 rather than crush an ant, — was transformed by journalists 
 into a preacher of anarchy and man of blood. Each of his 
 works, moreover, has been criticised separately, on its 
 political or artistic merits ; and never, so far as I know, 
 have his writings been studied, as they require to be, in 
 their ensemble. 
 
 It is time that this should be done. Lamennais, as a 
 philosopher, as a powerful writer, and as the head of a 
 political school, is an individuality which it is important 
 thoroughly to know. The progress of his mind is intimately 
 linked with the progress of the epoch. 
 
 This, however, is a work I have neither time nor space 
 to accomplish here. If I were able to follow the successive 
 manifestations of that vast intellect one by one, I believe I 
 could show how his philosophical theory of the general con- 
 sent — or tradition — considered as the criterion of certainty,
 
 64 MAZZINI. 
 
 was destined by logical necessity to lead him to the social 
 principle of the People, sole depositary and continuer of 
 tradition. But the few pages at my command would not 
 suffice for this ; and I shall therefore limit myself to indi- 
 cating the direction to be pursued by all who are desirous 
 of rightly studying his life and works. 
 
 Felicite Lamennais was born in 1782 at St. Malo ; in 
 that province of Brittany which gave Pelagie, Abelard, and 
 Descartes to France, and in the same city which had 
 witnessed the birth of Chateaubriand a few years before. 
 His mother died during his infancy, and the wealth which 
 his father had acquired in commerce having been lost in 
 the Revolution, the family had not sufficient means to pro- 
 vide him with a regular education. The boy thus grew up 
 in complete freedom, beneath the eye of God ; untram- 
 melled by the pedantic methods of a college, and even 
 without a master ; passing his days between the family 
 library — where he was often shut up by an old uncle, with 
 Horace and Tacitus for companions — and the shore of the 
 vast ocean, dashing, like a wave of eternal poetry, against 
 the barren rocks of Brittany. 
 
 The intellect of Lamennais developed its native sublimity 
 and independence in the solitude, unrestrained by any 
 formal doctrine. His imagination, nourished by the con- 
 templation of nature, and the noble and severe poetry of 
 the scenes by which he was surrounded, was alive to 
 religious inspiration at a very early age. We are told by 
 Robinet that " he even now remembers, with a sort of dis- 
 may, the sense of pride that took possession of him one 
 day, when he was but nine years old, on contemplating a 
 terrific tempest from the walls of the city, and hearing the 
 miserably prosaic remarks of the other spectators on the 
 aspect of the sea and the raging of the waves. Theif
 
 IAMENNAIS. 65 
 
 observations aroused a sense of disdainful pity in his mind, 
 and he drew apart from them, recognising within himself, 
 child as he was, the instinct of the infinite, revealed to him 
 by the sight of the raging elements." 
 
 Meanwhile, another ocean, not less solemn and tremen- 
 dous, was raging around the young spirit which thus 
 identified itself with the tempest— the sea of Revolution, 
 beating fiercely against a past which had founded the unity 
 of France, but was incapable of aught further, and there- 
 fore doomed to perish. That sea swept over and nearly 
 submerged the soil whose produce was parasitic honour and 
 monopoly of caste ; in order that, like Egypt after the 
 inundation of the Nile, its sources of production might be 
 renewed, and prepared for a second harvest. 
 
 But — like every violent impulse — overpassing its true 
 limits, the Revolution severed the tradition it should have 
 continued ; and in order more completely to separate itself 
 from the old formulas of religion, it assailed the foundations 
 of Religion itself — eternal Source of all the successive 
 formulae adopted by humanity. In the midst of the 
 gigantic tumult ; in a land shaken by fallen ruins, it was 
 natural that the icy wing of Doubt should darken for a 
 time the young and solitary soul thus educated to reflection 
 by the unguided study of a mass of unselected reading. 
 All the most powerful intellects have begun their career by 
 doubt Doubt descended upon the soul of Lamennais, but 
 only to pass across it like cloud-shadows over the sea, 
 leaving no trace of its passage. The conflict was brief, and 
 the Empire found Lamennais sustained by an ardent 
 religious faith, and thirsting for religious unity. 
 
 This was in 1804. 
 
 The relations of the Empire to religion are well known. 
 The Empire professed its desire to protect religion ; but it 
 
 34o
 
 66 MAZZINL 
 
 was that protection of the powerful which stifles all liberty. 
 Education, the Priesthood, all things were required to 
 succumb to the dominating Power. Religious worship 
 became a branch of public administration — nothing more. 
 This was the state of things as far as the Government was 
 concerned ; among the people, indifference had succeeded 
 to negation. How could any real religion show itself 
 among an abject stipendiary and servile clergy? The 
 course of Lamennais was soon decided. His first war 
 must be waged against the most glaring, urgent, and serious 
 evil. The time was not yet ripe for him to seek out a new 
 sphere ; he withdrew into the ancient sphere. Born a 
 Roman Catholic, he believed in the sovereignty of the 
 faith — in the triumph of moral force. He regarded forms 
 merely as the pledges, the symbols of the idea. In 1808, 
 the year after the Spanish insurrection, he published his first 
 work, Reflections on the Condition of the Church in France. 
 It was alike a voice from ■ Religion and a voice from the 
 People, and as such, a simultaneous presage of the epoch to 
 come ; but the book itself was merely a violent and intolerant 
 assault upon the disposition to negation displayed by the 
 eighteenth century, and an appeal to the clergy to rekindle 
 men's faith in the unseen and immaterial, by worthily 
 representing that faith themselves. There was nothing in 
 such language calculated to offend the existing Powers, yet, 
 nevertheless, as if foreseeing the genius destined one day to 
 fraternise with the people, the Imperial Police was alarmed, 
 and ordered the sequestration of the work. 
 
 Four years later Lamennais published, jointly with his 
 brother, a second work, On the Institution of Bishops. 
 Two years after this Napoleon fell, and Lamennais went to
 
 LAMENNAIS. 67 
 
 Pari here he dwelt in poverty till the return from Elba- 
 It was then that, in order to escape persecution, he went to 
 London. He remained there seven months, in great 
 poverty and quite unknown. He returned to France after 
 the battle of Waterloo, and shortly afterwards retired to his 
 own Brittany. There, at thirty-four years of age, in 1S17, 
 he entered the priesthood at Rennes. In 181 7 he 
 published the first volume of his work On Indifference in 
 Matters of Religion. This was his first experience and his 
 first illusion. 
 
 His first illusion. The Revolution had persecuted 
 Religion ; the Empire had degraded it by making it 
 dependent upon the State ; the new Monarchy promised 
 to restore it to honour. Founded upon the theory of Right 
 Divine, and the Catholic principle of Authority, the 
 interests of the Monarchy were in fact identical with those 
 of the Church. 
 
 On all sides, save in the ranks of the Government, the 
 tendency of society was towards opposition. It was so in the 
 masses ; the instinct of the age — indefinite, but nearly 
 always true in direction — perceived that there was no real 
 vitality left in the Church, and that every effort in its favour 
 would be unavailing. It was so in the thinkers, almost all 
 of whom belonged to the purely rationalistic and experi- 
 mental school ; and it was so in the ranks of liberalism ; 
 for the liberals of that day, incapable of grasping the 
 conception of a progressive epoch, sought merely to 
 destroy, and were followers of the superficial school of 
 Voltaire. 
 
 Trembling at the recollection of the excesses of the 
 Revolution ; irritated by an indifference threatening the 
 nation with intellectual torpor, and more perilous than 
 ill-grounded hostility ; convinced that the policy pursued
 
 68 MAZZINI. 
 
 by the dominant school led only to incredulity, and had in 
 it no germs of a future — Lamennais was driven to rest his 
 hopes upon the existing Power. He cherished the idea of 
 a monarchy so linked with Religion as to put an end to the 
 existing moral anarchy, and reconstitute a vast and prolific 
 unity. His work On Indifference in Matters of Religion is based 
 on the notion of a chimerical alliance between the two 
 authorities. The volumes, issued successively during the 
 years 1820 to 1824, were, like his first, unjust and intoler- 
 ant ; violent in the political portions, and imperfect, though 
 powerful, in the philosophical part. But a radical diversity 
 of opinion should not make us forget the real merits of the 
 work; its undeniable eloquence, and forcible expression of 
 a real need — already forefelt by poetry — the necessity of 
 re-establishing Tradition as the source of Authority ; of 
 breaking through the circle in which rationalism and 
 materialism had enclosed the human mind, and of going 
 forward under the double guidance of a religious faith and 
 the conscience of Humanity. The author of the work on 
 Indifference thus did good service, though unconsciously, to 
 the cause of common progress, and we are beginning to 
 perceive this at the present day. He restored Tradition 
 to its rights — Tradition, without which no philosophy can 
 exist ; and he infused new life and gave new consecration 
 to philosophy itself, by bringing it into contact with the 
 social world ; from which it had gradually been farther and 
 farther withdrawn. 
 
 Led astray by his erroneous political opinions, Lamen- 
 nais himself misconceived the bearing and consequences of 
 the principles he propounded, and his view of Tradition was 
 narrow and arbitrary ; but he re-opened the true path, and 
 that alone is sufficient to give a philosophical value to his 
 work. The restitution of one vital element to human
 
 LAMENNAIS. 69 
 
 intellectual progress is the principal characteristic of the 
 book. It was to be expected that the details should soon 
 be forgotten, and they were so. Moreover, to any one who 
 studied his pages with attention, it was easy to perceive 
 that the ties which still bound him to error were not likely 
 long to resist the progressive character of his own genius. 
 He allied himself to Monarchy, not so much because of any 
 intrinsic merit he perceived therein, as because it presented 
 an appearance of stability, from which he anticipated 
 potency in good. At times it is evident that he himself 
 regarded the alliance with suspicion ; and his frequent 
 reproofs of the Monarchy's lack of energy already betray 
 that republican severity, which, at a later period, inspired 
 his Words of a Believer, and which was destined to be 
 fostered in him by the conduct of the Monarchy itself. 
 
 Partly from that spirit of distrust, natural to every merely 
 temporal Power, partly from special circumstances, the 
 Monarchy of the Restoration, which realised no advantages 
 for the people, realised scarcely any benefit to the Catholic 
 religion. The Church remained as servile as it had been 
 under the Empire. "The Bishops," said the authors of 
 JJAvc7iir, in a memorial addressed to Gregory XVI., 
 " were allowed no official communication with the Holy 
 See, and every Catholic priest who ventured to correspond 
 with Rome ran the risk of punishment, possibly even of 
 exile. There were no longer any provincial councils, 
 diocesan synods, nor ecclesiastical tribunals for the main- 
 tenance of discipline. The Council of State was the sole 
 judge in all matters concerning religion and conscience. 
 Education was in the hands of a secular corporation, from 
 v hich the Clergy were excluded: the spiritual direction of 
 the Seminarists was circumscribed ; and even that branch 
 of instruction was subject, in the most important points, to
 
 70 MAZZINI. 
 
 the civil authorities. The system of Evangelical Councils 
 under a common direction was either forbidden by the law, 
 or only granted by special authorisation, revocable at any 
 time, and almost exclusively to a few feminine congregations. 
 All, in short, that constituted the true life of religion was 
 enervated or destroyed by the Imperial laws, which had 
 been retained. The two celebrated ordinances of the 16th 
 June 1828 are known to all men; ordinances which submit, 
 de facto, all ecclesiastical schools to the supremacy of the 
 civil authority; they limited the number of youths who 
 should be allowed to prepare themselves by prayer and 
 study for the service of God; they compelled them, at a 
 certain age, to assume a special form of dress, and required 
 of the teachers — teachers previously approved by the 
 Government — an oath never to belong to any congregation 
 unrecognised by the State." 
 
 Such was the method of the restored Monarchy, whose 
 recent unaccountable habit it is to represent itself sur- 
 rounded by an aureole of religious piety and Catholic 
 fervour. It rendered that Church servile which it pro- 
 fessed to revere, and undermined the foundations of religion 
 by a hypocritical alliance which made it in some sort 
 responsible for every political step injurious to the country. 
 
 Lamennais thought to remedy this double evil by a 
 simple alteration of names. Joining the ministerial press, 
 he wrote first in the Conservateur (the property of Chateau- 
 briand), then in the Drafieau Blanc, then in the Memorial 
 Catholique; but he nevertheless preserved an independent 
 attitude towards the supreme power, and remained an 
 opponent of the ministry Villele, as he had been of the 
 ministry Decazes. Little by little he abandoned the cause 
 of Monarchy, and devoted himself exclusively to that of 
 Religion. His dissatisfaction was still more openly evinced
 
 LAMENNAIS. 71 
 
 in 1825, when he published his .Religion, considered in its 
 Relation to Civil and Political Ada tiers, a book which was 
 prosecuted by the Government, and for which he was con- 
 demned to a fine of thirty-six francs; and again in 1829, by 
 the publication of another work, On the Progress of Revo- 
 lution and of the. War against the Church, in which he 
 maintained the cause of Religious Independence against 
 the Government. 
 
 The year 1830 arrived. A monarchy, the issue of fifteen 
 years of purely negative and sceptical opposition, could not 
 be more religious than the monarchy it overthrew. To 
 organise power with firmness ; to constitute it upon the 
 basis of material interests by leading men's minds away 
 from the path of ideas and of moral progress — to maintain a 
 constant harmony between the inclinations of the Parliament 
 and the personal designs of the King ; — such was the 
 programme of the monarchy of the Citizen King. It had 
 no principles, no belief, and no affection for either Church 
 or people. The last were repulsed, and the former was 
 subjugated, as it had been under the previous monarchy. 
 Lamennais therefore held the Empire, the Legitimate 
 Monarchy, and the Monarchy of Louis Philippe, in like 
 esteem. 
 
 Abroad, matters were even worse. In Italy, in Russia, 
 and in Austria, the people were cruelly oppressed ; and the 
 Church was a mere instrument in the hands of unjust 
 governments. The experience was complete : the illusion 
 destroyed for ever. Lamennais, in disdainful anger, burst 
 the bonds that so long had confined him. There yet 
 remained to him one other element of authority to be tested 
 in the service of righteousness — a power, great through its 
 gigantic past, founded upon the moral force of the Word, 
 and accustomed to declare itself the earthly representative
 
 12 MAZZINI. 
 
 of Him who, above all others, had loved the people — the 
 Papacy, Lamennais abandoned monarchy and turned to the 
 Pope : despairing of all help from the lying protectors of 
 the Church, he turned to the Church itself. It was the 
 second period of his career ; the second experience ; the 
 second illusion ; and it was destined to be far briefer than 
 the first. 
 
 I know that many have ranked Lamennais among the 
 writers who follow after victory, no matter whence it spring. 
 But they who so judge him understand nothing of the man, 
 nor of his works. Lamennais was gifted by nature with far 
 more of the temperament of the martyr than of the sectary 
 of popular applause. He followed nothing but the truth ; 
 that which his own mind declared to him to be such. His 
 writings, before the year 1830, already indicate the progres- 
 sive nature of his mind. Now, to progress is not to change ; 
 to progress is to live; and the true life of genius consists 
 precisely in its assimilation of a portion of the great social 
 manifestations of its epoch. The insurrection of July did 
 not seek the achievement of any new aim ; it re-asserted 
 former conquests, which were threatened by the Govern- 
 ment ; but, as is always the case in great popular movements, 
 it gave rise to demonstrations which revealed the germs of a 
 new life in the people, and proved that their antagonism to 
 the faith was not an antagonism to the religious principle 
 itself, but to the worn-out religious forms which had become 
 hostile to progress. In France three days of popular 
 sovereignty witnessed no single act of crime or disorder. 
 Religion excited no hostility save when it appeared united 
 with a monarchy rebellious to the will of the country : 
 wherever it appeared alone it was treated with respect. 
 And even the temporary enthusiasms excited by various 
 attempts at creating a new religious faith, were really a proof
 
 LAMENNAIS. 73 
 
 that men's minds were weary of mere individualism and 
 doubt, and were thirsting for a new and potent unity. In 
 other parts of the European continent — in Poland, Belgium, 
 Switzerland, and Italy — the popular movements were pure 
 from all anarchy ; and in some instances a religious feeling 
 was associated with their national aspirations. There was 
 in those revelations of the popular principle, in the prophetic 
 thrill that then ran through the earth, a something divine. 
 Lamennais understood it. "We live," he wrote, "in one 
 of those epochs in which all things aspire towards renova- 
 tion, to pass from one condition to another : none doubt 
 this. Never was there a presentiment more intense, a 
 conviction more universal. But according as we contem- 
 plate the future or the past — life or death — some amongst 
 11 hope, others fear. But, I repeat it, we all of us believe 
 in an approaching change, in an inevitable great revolution. 
 It will come then, and o^iickly. In vain they strive to 
 maintain the things that were ; in vain to retrace the course 
 of time, or to perpetuate the existing anarchy; it is impos- 
 sible. There is in the intimate nature of things a supreme, 
 a fatal, and irrevocable necessity, stronger than every 
 power. Of what avail are the pigmy hands stretched forth 
 to arrest the progress of the human race ? What can they 
 accomplish ? The people are impelled by an irresistible 
 force. Whatever efforts are made, they will go whither 
 they are called ; and naught can arrest their course through 
 the path of the ages, for it is upon that path that man is 
 gradually prepared for eternity." 
 
 Wherefore, thought Lamennais — the mission of the 
 Peoples, and their disposition towards order and justice, 
 being recognised — wherefore should the Church refuse to 
 u gulate their movements, to preside over the action of this 
 providential instinct of the multitudes?
 
 74 MAZZINI. 
 
 Why should not Rome— which has already twice given 
 unity to the world, under the Caesars and under the Popes — 
 utter a third Word, of import still more vast, and con- 
 sequences still more fruitful ? Why should not the priest, 
 himself a son of the people, elevate the hand that bears the 
 martyr's cross, and sanctify with his blessing the crusade of 
 the oppressed, in the pilgrimage ordained for them by God 
 towards liberty, equality, and love? And Lamennais 
 devoted himself to the work with all the ardour which faith 
 in a great principle awakens in a powerful intellect. He 
 exhorted the clergy to renounce the miserable governmental 
 stipend which impeded their liberty of action. 
 
 In September 1830 he founded LAvenir, a daily 
 publication bearing the epigraph God and Liberty, and 
 founded at the same time a General Agency for the defence 
 of religious liberty. In the first he propounded a doctrine 
 which may be defined in his own words as destined " to 
 destroy the reign of force ; to substitute for it the reign of 
 justice and charity, and thus realise among the members 
 of the great human family a unity ; in which each living of 
 the life of all will both share and promote the well-being of 
 all." 
 
 Sueh, he affirmed, was the spirit of the Gospel. By 
 means of the General Agency he established an association 
 for the purpose of obtaining a remedy for all violations 
 of the liberty of the ecclesiastical ministry; of protecting 
 the establishments of primary, secondary, and superior 
 education against every arbitrary exercise of power; of 
 maintaining the rights of every Frenchman to associate with 
 others for purposes of prayer, of study, or of investigating 
 the best means of serving the cause of religion, of civilisa- 
 tion, or of the poor. At a later period he proposed that 
 a union should be formed among " all those who, in spite
 
 LAMENNAIS. 75 
 
 of the massacre of Poland, the dismemberment of Belgium, 
 and the conduct of the pretended liberal governments, 
 persisted in the hope that the nations would one day be 
 free, and in the determination to labour towards that 
 aim." 
 
 These efforts were not without result. Local associations 
 were established, the provincial papers disseminated his 
 writings, and several schools were instituted. And, that 
 naught of the earthly portion assigned by God to the just 
 man — the praises of the good and the persecutions of the 
 wicked — might be withheld from Lamennais, — the Govern- 
 ment, alarmed, sequestrated EAvenir, and summoned 
 its director before their tribunals.* 
 
 But governmental persecutions could not subdue the 
 mind of Lamennais, who, however, was destined, to endure 
 a far more terrible trial, the ruin of his last and noblest 
 illusion ; the proof that his heroic effort to restore life to the 
 Rome of the Popes was too late ; that Rome was a tomb, 
 and the Papacy a corpse. That corpse, galvanised by 
 diplomacy, arose to curse the daring priest who strove 
 to recall it to the long-forgotten Gospel. The old man of 
 the Vatican was no other than one more bad king among 
 the many ; the Pope had completed his moral suicide on the 
 day on which he ceased to listen to the voice of progressive 
 humanity. And now, precisely when Lamennais appealed 
 to him to raise the banner of Christ and liberty, the Pope 
 made King was calling upon Austria to destroy that banner 
 in his states : while Lamennais garlanded the sepulchre 
 wherein Poland lay for a while entombed, with all the 
 flowers of Christian hope, — the Pope was cursing the liberty 
 of Poland, and gratifying Russia by signing the servile Bull 
 
 * Lamennais' articles in VAvenir have been collected by Dellaye, 
 under the title of Trou Me, nsres.
 
 76 MAZZTNL 
 
 against the Polish bishops : while Laraennais was collect- 
 ing 80,000 francs in the office of the Avenir in aid of the 
 suffering Irish, the Pope-King was organising cohorts of 
 ruffians to shed the blood of unarmed men and women in 
 the streets of Cesena and Forll. The hierarchy in Rome 
 persecuted all who joined in the noble endeavours of 
 Lamennais. In many dioceses the ordination of young 
 men suspected of approving the doctrines of the Avenir was 
 forbidden ; professors and curates were suspended from the 
 exercise of their sacred offices for the same reason. The 
 self-styled religious press heaped calumny and outrage on 
 the apostles of God and liberty ; and the rumour of a papal 
 condemnation was already spread, when Lamennais, loyal 
 and devoted to the last, suspended the publication of 
 U Avenir and started for Rome, accompanied by two fellow- 
 writers in that paper, in order to dispel the doubts of 
 Gregory XVI., and explain his doctrines to him. 
 
 The book Affaires de Rome contains an exact and 
 dispassionate account of that period ; of the manner in 
 which the three pilgrims were received ; of the inefficacy 
 of their efforts ; of their departure ; of the Encyclica of 
 the 15th August 1832 ; of the resignation with which 
 L'Avefiir was suppressed and the General Agency dissolved ; 
 and of the persistence with which the Court of Rome 
 nevertheless demanded a declaration of absolute, unlimited 
 submission, in temporal as well as spiritual matters. The 
 arts adopted constituted a positive system of moral torture ; 
 used against a man whose only guilt was having dreamed 
 the redemption of Rome possible.* 
 
 They succeeded. In a moment of weakness Lamennais 
 
 * 
 
 I will quote a single example. The Bishop of Rennes published 
 a confidential letter, wrung from the brother of Lamennais, declaring 
 bis intention of separating from him.
 
 LAMENNAIS. 77 
 
 signed in Paris, on the 2nd December 1833, his un- 
 limited adhesion to the doctrine of the Encyclica ; and 
 retired, wounded to the heart, to the solitude of La Chenaye, 
 about a league from Denan. 
 
 The second experience was complete — the last illusion 
 vanished. How many youthful, ardent spirits have I not 
 seen succumb beneath the first ! How many powerful 
 intellects, illumined at the outset by a ray of sacred truth, 
 afterwards degraded by a single delusion, have profaned the 
 flower of faith and hope by scepticism and the inertia of dis- 
 couragement ! At fifty-one years of age Lamennais had twice 
 drained the cup of life to the last drop, and tasted naught 
 but bitterness and impotence. And yet— the example is 
 almost unique — he did not despair. In that small and 
 slender form, which appears as if sustained solely by force 
 of will, was the soul of a giant. God had impressed his 
 Napoleonic brow with the sign of a mission, and that brow, 
 furrowed by the papal and monarchical anathemas, had bent 
 for an instant, not before their fury, but beneath the weight 
 of a divine idea, and only to be raised again more serene, 
 irradiated with new youth, and crowned with the glories of 
 the future. 
 
 Discouragement is but disenchanted egotism. 
 The thoughts that thronged across his spirit in those days 
 of trial, and which were his salvation, are so beautifully and 
 powerfully expressed in his Affaires de Rome, and appear 
 to me so well calculated to strengthen all who are labouring 
 under discouragement, that I cannot resist the temptation 
 of quoting a portion of them here. 
 
 " Indifference, inertia, a naturally yielding disposition, 
 and, above all, fear, paralysing fear ; these are the causes 
 which blunt or corrupt the weak conscience of the many, 
 who wander hither and thither without any governing rule
 
 78 MAZZINL 
 
 of conduct, crying, Peace, />eaee, when there is no peace 
 possible. They fear fatigue ; they fear the struggle ; they 
 fear everything but that which is really fearful. I tell you 
 that there is an eye whose glance descends like a curse from 
 on high upon these men of little faith. Wherefore think 
 they they were born ? God has not placed man on earth 
 as in his final dwelling ; to waste his days in the slumber of 
 indolence. Time passes them by, not like the light zephyr 
 that caresses and refreshes the brow, but like the wind that 
 now burns, now freezes ; a tempest that drives their frail 
 bark among arid rocks, beneath a stormy sky. Let them 
 arise and watch — seize the oars, and bedew their brows with 
 sweat. Man must do violence to his own nature ; and bend 
 his will before that immutable order of things which encom- 
 passes him above, below, in grief and misfortune. A duty, 
 an absolute duty, governs him from the cradle upwards ; 
 growing with his growth and accompanying him to the 
 tomb ; a duty towards his brothers, as well as to himself; a 
 duty towards his Country, towards Humanity, and above 
 all, towards the Church ; the Church, which, rightly under- 
 stood, is but the home of the universal family ; the great 
 city wherein dwells Christ, at once Priest, King, and ruler 
 of the world ; calling upon the free, in every portion of the 
 universe, to unite beneath the eternal law of intellect and 
 love." 
 
 " And since he appeals to all, and all of us here below are 
 soldiers enlisted to fight the good fight against evil ; the 
 battle of order against disorder ; of light against darkness : 
 since we are all of us given power, nay commanded, strictly 
 commanded — from the supreme head of the society to 
 which we belong, down to the obscurest Christian amongst 
 us — we will bring our forces, however humble, in aid of the 
 common aim.
 
 LAMENNAIS. 79 
 
 ' ' Was not the offering of the poor Shepherds accepted by 
 the God who came into the world to save us with the same 
 favour as the rich offerings of the Magi ? 
 
 " No : our lips shall not be mute while the world is over- 
 shadowed by danger of death. We will not stand motion- 
 less like veiled statues on the shore of the torrent which 
 threatens the foundations of the temple, detaching the stones 
 one by one, and hurling them confusedly among the ruins 
 of things doomed to pass away, — the hut of the peasant, 
 the palace of the noble, and the throne of the king. Let all 
 who have the things of eternity at heart arise with us ! Let 
 all who love God and man with all their heart and soul, and 
 count all else as naught, join their voices and their hearts to 
 ours. Why disturb ourselves if many refuse to unite in 
 action with us ? Shall we consume the energy of our hearts 
 in idle tears for this ? Faith demands action, not tears ; it 
 demands of us the power of sacrifice — sole origin of our 
 salvation ; — it seeks Christians capable of looking down 
 upon the world from on high, and facing its fatigues without 
 fear; Christians capable of saying, We will die for this; 
 above all, Christians capable of saying, We will live for 
 this; for he who dies for the world achieves but an 
 individual triumph, and the triumph to which man should 
 aspire is not his own, but that of the cause he has 
 embraced." 
 
 The cause of Lamennais was, from that day forward, 
 our own. His glance had for the second time penetrated 
 that infinite, the image of which had been revealed to him 
 when, a child of nine years old, he contemplated the 
 tempest from the walls of his native city. It was the 
 infinite of Humanity, the progressive interpreter of the law 
 of God, which he, like Pascal, viewed as a single man who 
 lives for ever and increases in knowledge for ever.
 
 80 MAZZINL 
 
 Humanity, initiator of its own advance ; now through the 
 medium of individuals, now of multitudes, according to 
 time and events ; but for ever bent, from experience to 
 experience, from epoch to epoch, upon ascending the scale 
 of perfectionment ; on achieving the comprehension of its 
 aim and of its duty; on the practical realisation of the 
 divine ideal within it. It was the infinite of the people ; of 
 the universality of citizens, superior to all powers ; of the 
 universality of believers, superior to all the Popes ; steadfast 
 amidst the change of all things else ; capable of improve- 
 ment, while all else is doomed to corruption; sole depositary 
 of the germs of a social and religious future; while indi- 
 viduals and castes cling to a past destined sooner or later to 
 overwhelm them in its own ruin. 
 
 From that day the third period of Lamennais' existence 
 began : the priest of the Romish Church became the 
 priest of the Church Universal. The first expression, I 
 might almost say effusion, of that new life was the powerful 
 work entitled Words of a Believer, in the lyrical passages of 
 which the three immortal sisters, Religion, Charity, and 
 Poetry, are heard together in lovely harmony ; a book 
 which Gregory XVI., in his Encyclica of the 7th July 
 1834, called libellum .... mole quidem exigeum pravitate 
 tauten ingentum, but which, translated into all languages, 
 has everywhere carried consolation and promise to the souls 
 of the sorrowing and oppressed. 
 
 To conclude : the space allotted me does not allow a 
 critical examination of the Affaires de Rome, the Livre dn 
 Peuple, or the articles which appeared in the Monde, and 
 were afterwards collected under the title of Politics for the 
 People; works, all of them, posterior to the Words of a 
 Believer, and marking the further progress made on the 
 path pursued by Lamennais with the epoch. He is now
 
 LAMENNAIS. 81 
 
 employed on a work* in many volumes, to which he 
 intends to consign the fruits of his long studies and 
 reflections. My purpose in these few lines has merely 
 been to point out the direction in which he advances. I 
 desire to show the link — hitherto unobserved — which 
 unites his past with his present ; and to enable the reader 
 to understand how this man, often accused by those who 
 either have not read him, or have read him superficially, 
 of sudden and inexplicable changes, has, in fact, always 
 pursued one sole sacred idea — the good of the people, 
 through the medium of a religious belief. He has only 
 changed the instruments by which he strove to realise that 
 aim, whensoever those he wielded broke in his grasp 
 through corruption or decay. And the series of these 
 changes forms a summary of the experience of an entire 
 epoch. If we had gained naught besides this from 
 Lamennais, he would still have deserved our gratitude and 
 affection. He has, so to speak, sacrificed himself for us ; 
 he has explored for us the path we have to tread, and 
 pointed out to us where the abyss lies beneath the flowers ; 
 where the void is hidden by the semblance of life. He 
 compelled the Monarchy to unmask, and the Papacy to 
 utter its last word in the Encyclica of 1832, And when 
 at length he came amongst us, crying, There is neither hope 
 nor life save in the people, it was not merely the cry of 
 a noble soul athirst for love — he brought with him 
 demonstration incontrovertible. 
 
 " The path he pursues is that of Humanity. Long may 
 he live to pursue it ! His career is not completed. Where 
 will he stop ? cry those of his adversaries who would fain 
 see him turn back. Onward, onward, for ever ! cry those 
 who comprehend his soul; for his life, like the life of 
 
 * Esquisse June Philosophic. 
 
 341
 
 82 MAZZTNI. 
 
 genius, like the life of the coming generations, consists in 
 advancing 
 
 " Will the day ever come when his glance shall embrace 
 the whole of the immense horizon spread before it ? Of 
 this we are certain, that from whatever altitude he may 
 attempt it, he will measure its depth and breadth free 
 alike from trouble or illusion ; and if, in order to reach the 
 promised land, it be needful to descend into the abyss, he 
 will dare the descent, unrestrained by the world's vain 
 clamour. For us, and for our century, he has initiated a 
 crusade more glorious and more memorable in the sight of 
 future generations than the crusade preached by St. 
 Bernard ; for not the sepulchre, but the legacy of Christ is 
 the price of the conquest to which we are led by the 
 Breton priest. The battle is no longer with Islam, but with 
 the impiety of social life ; we seek not the ransom of a few 
 Christians, but of the vast majority of the human race." 
 
 Those beautiful lines are written by a woman, known to 
 Europe under the name of George Sand. 
 
 [Mr. Mazzini wrote three different notices of the works 
 of George Sand at different periods. The first appeared in 
 the Monthly Chronicle; the second in the People's Journal ; 
 and the third formed the preface to a translation of the 
 Lettres d'tm Voyageur, by Miss Eliza Ashurst. 
 
 The important portions of these articles have been 
 brought together in the following pages ; but as the greater 
 part of the earliest of them consisted of a critical refutation 
 of the charges of immorality and "aversion to matrimony," 
 brought against George Sand by certain clamorous critics 
 of the day, who, although listened to with unmerited 
 respect by the public during the rising of her star, have 
 been utterly forgotten or disregarded since it attained its 
 meridian, the translator has, by the author's desire, 
 abstained from reprinting a defence of which the interest 
 was merely temporary.]
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 
 
 [A very incorrect translation of this criticism appeared in the Monthly 
 
 Chronicle in 1S39.] 
 
 I stood one day in a Swiss village at the foot of the Jura, 
 and watched the coming of a storm. Heavy black clouds, 
 their edges purpled by the setting sun, were rapidly cover- 
 ing the loveliest sky in Europe, save that of Italy. Thunder 
 growled in the distance, and gusts of biting wind were 
 driving huge drops of rain over the thirsty plain. Looking 
 upwards, I beheld a large Alpine falcon, now rising, now 
 sinking, as he floated bravely in the very midst of the storm, 
 and I could almost fancy that he strove to battle with it. 
 At every fresh peal of thunder, the noble bird bounded 
 higher aloft, as if in answering defiance. I followed him 
 with my eyes for a long time, until he disappeared in the 
 east. On the ground, about fifty paces beneath me, stood 
 a stork ; perfectly tranquil and impassible in the midst of 
 the warring elements. Twice or thrice she turned her head 
 towards the quarter from whence the wind came, with an 
 indescribable air of half indifferent curiosity ; but at length 
 she drew up one of her long sinewy legs, hid her head 
 beneath her wing, and calmly composed herself to sleep. 
 
 I thought of Byron and Goethe ; of the stormy sky that 
 overhung both; of the tempest-tossed existence, the life- 
 long struggle, of the one, and the calm of the other ; and 
 of the two mighty sources of poetry exhausted and closed 
 by them.
 
 8 4 MAZZINI. 
 
 Byron and Goethe — the two names that predominate, 
 and, come what may, ever will predominate, over our every 
 recollection of the fifty years that have passed away. They 
 rule ; — the master-minds, I might almost say the tyrants, of 
 a whole period of poetry ; brilliant, yet sad ; glorious in 
 youth and daring, yet cankered by the worm i' the bud, 
 despair. They are the two Representative Poets of two 
 great schools ; and around them we are compelled to group 
 all the lesser minds which contributed to render the era 
 illustrious. The qualities which adorn and distinguish their 
 works are to be found, although more thinly scattered, in 
 other poets their contemporaries ; still theirs are the names 
 that involuntarily rise to our lips whenever we seek to 
 characterise the tendencies of the age in which they lived. 
 Their genius pursued different, even opposite routes; and 
 yet very rarely do our thoughts turn to either without 
 evoking the image of the other, as a sort of necessary 
 complement to the first. The eyes of Europe were fixed 
 upon the pair, as the spectators gaze on two mighty 
 wrestlers in the same arena ; and they, like noble and 
 generous adversaries, admired, praised, and held out the 
 hand to each other. Many poets have followed in their 
 footsteps j none have been so popular. Others have found 
 judges and critics who have appreciated them calmly and 
 impartially ; not so they : for them there have been only 
 enthusiasts or enemies, wreaths or stones ; and when they 
 vanished into the vast night that envelops and transforms 
 alike men and things — silence reigned around their tombs. 
 Little by little, poetry had passed away from our world, and 
 it seemed as if their last sigh had extinguished the sacred 
 flame. 
 
 A reaction has now commenced ; good, in so far as ft 
 reveals a desire for and promise of new life ; evil, in so far
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 85 
 
 as il betrays narrow views, a tendency to injustice towards 
 departed genius, and the absence of any fixed rule or 
 principle to guide our appreciation of the past. Human 
 judgment, like Luther's drunken peasant, when saved from 
 falling on one side, too often topples over on the other. 
 The reaction against Goethe, in his own country especially, 
 which was courageously and justly begun by Menzel during 
 his lifetime, has been carried to exaggeration since his 
 death. Certain social opinions, to which I myself belong, 
 but which, although founded on a sacred principle, should 
 not be allowed to interfere with the impartiality of our 
 judgment, have weighed heavily in the balance ; and many 
 young, ardent, and enthusiastic minds of our day have 
 reiterated with Bonne that Goethe is the worst of despots ; 
 the cancer of the German body. 
 
 The English reaction against Byron — I do not speak of 
 that mixture of cant and stupidity which denies the poet 
 his place in Westminster Abbey, but of literary reaction — 
 has shown itself still more unreasoning. I have met with 
 adorers of Shelley who denied the poetic genius of Byron ; 
 others who seriously compared his poems with those of Sir 
 Walter Scott. One very much overrated critic writes that 
 " Byron makes man after his own image, and woman after 
 his own heart ; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a 
 yielding slave." The first forgot the verses in which their 
 favourite hailed 
 
 " The pilgrim of eternity, whose fame 
 Over his living head like Heaven is bent ; "* 
 
 the second, that after the appearance of The Giaour and 
 Childe Harold, Sir Walter Scott renounced writing poetry.t 
 The last forgot that while he was quietly writing criticisms, 
 
 * Adonais. t Lockhart.
 
 86 MAZZINI. 
 
 Byron was dying for new-born liberty in Greece. All 
 judged, too many in each country still judge, the two 
 poets, Byron and Goethe, after an absolute type of the 
 beautiful, the true, or the false, which they had formed in 
 their own minds; without regard to the state of social 
 relations as they were or are ; without any true conception 
 of the destiny or mission of Poetry, or of the law by which 
 it, and every other artistic manifestation of human life, is 
 governed. 
 
 There is no absolute type on earth : the absolute exists 
 in the Divine Idea alone ; the gradual comprehension of 
 which man is destined to attain ; although its complete 
 realisation is impossible on earth ; earthly life being but 
 one stage of the eternal evolution of Life, manifested in 
 thought and action ; strengthened by all the achievements of 
 the past, and advancing from age to age towards a less im- 
 perfect expression of that idea. Our earthly life is one phase 
 of the eternal aspiration of the soul towards progress, which 
 is our Law ; ascending in increasing power and purity from 
 the finite towards the infinite ; from the real towards the 
 ideal ; from that which is, towards that which is to come. 
 In the immense storehouse of the past evolutions of life 
 constituted by universal tradition, and in the prophetic 
 instinct brooding in the depths of the human soul, does 
 poetry seek inspiration. It changes with the times, for it is 
 their expression; it is transformed with society, for — con- 
 sciously or unconsciously — it sings the lay of Humanity; 
 although, according to the individual bias or circumstances 
 of the singer, it assumes the hues of the present, or of the 
 future in course of elaboration, and foreseen by the inspira- 
 tion of genius. It sings now a dirge and now a cradle 
 song ; it initiates or sums up. 
 
 Byron and Goethe summed up. Was it a defect in them ?
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 87 
 
 No ; it was the law of the times, and yet society at the pre- 
 sent day, twenty years after they have ceased to sing, 
 assumes to condemn them for having been born too soon. 
 Happy indeed are the poets whom God raises up at the 
 commencement of an era, under the rays of the rising sun. 
 A series of generations will lovingly repeat their verses, and 
 attribute to them the new life which they did but foresee in 
 the germ. 
 
 Byron and Goethe summed up. This is at once the 
 philosophical explanation of their works, and the secret of 
 their popularity. The spirit of an entire epoch of the 
 European world became incarnate in them ere its decease, 
 even as — in the political sphere — the spirit of Greece and 
 Rome became incarnate before death in Coesar and Alex- 
 ander. They were the poetic expression of that principle, 
 of which England was the economic, France the political, 
 and Germany the philosophic expression : the last formula, 
 effort, and result of a society founded on the principle of 
 Individuality. That epoch, the mission of which had been, 
 first through the labours of Greek philosophy, and after- 
 wards through Christianity, to rehabilitate, emancipate, and 
 develop individual man — appears to have concentrated in 
 them, in Fichte, in Adam Smith, and in the French school 
 des droits de P/iomme, its whole energy and power, in order 
 fully to represent and express all that it had achieved for 
 mankind. It was much ; but it was not the whole ; and 
 therefore it was doomed to pass away. The epoch of indi- 
 viduality was deemed near the goal ; when lo ! immense 
 horizons were revealed ; vast unknown lands in whose 
 untrodden forests the principle of individuality was an 
 insufficient guide. By the long and painful labours of that 
 epoch, the human unknown quantity had been disengaged 
 from the various quantities of different nature by which it
 
 88 MAZZINI. 
 
 had been surrounded; but only to lie left weak, isolated, 
 and recoiling in terror from the solitude in which it stood. 
 The political schools of the epoch had proclaimed the 
 sole basis of civil organisation to be the right to liberty and 
 equality (liberty for all), but they had encountered social 
 anarchy by the way. The Philosophy of the Epoch had 
 asserted the Sovereignty of the human Ego, and had ended 
 in the mere adoration oifact, in Hegelian immobility. The 
 Economy of the epoch imagined it had organised free com- 
 petition, while it had but organised the oppression of the 
 weak by the strong ; of labour by capital ; of poverty by 
 wealth. The Poetry of the epoch had represented indi- 
 viduality in its every phase ; had translated in sentiment 
 what science had theoretically demonstrated ; and it had 
 encountered the void. But as society at last discovered 
 that the destinies of the race were not contained in a mere 
 problem of liberty, but rather in the harmonisation of liberty 
 with association ; — so did poetry discover that the life it 
 had hitherto drawn from individuality alone was doomed 
 to perish for want of aliment ; and that its future existence 
 depended on enlarging and transforming its sphere. Both 
 society and poetry uttered a cry of despair : the death-agony 
 of a form of society produced the agitation we have seen 
 constantly increasing in Europe since 1815 : the death-agony 
 of a form of poetry evoked Byron and Goethe. I believe 
 this point of view to be the only one that can lead us to a 
 useful and impartial appreciation of these two great spirits. 
 
 There are two forms of Individuality ; the expressions of 
 its internal and external, or — as the Germans would say — 
 of its subjective and objective life. Byron was the poet of 
 the first, Goethe of the last. In Byron the Ego is revealed 
 in all its pride of power, freedom, and desire, in the uncon- 
 trolled plenitude of all its faculties ; inhaling existence at
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 89 
 
 every pore, eager to seize "the life of life." The world 
 around him neither rules nor tempers him. The Byronian 
 Ego aspires to rule it; but solely for dominion's sake, to 
 exercise upon it the Titanic force of his will. Accurately 
 speaking, he cannot be said to derive from it either colour, 
 tone, or image ; for it is he who colours ; he who sings ; he 
 whose image is everywhere reflected and reproduced. His 
 poetry emanates from his own soul ; to be thence diffused 
 upon things external; he holds his state in the centre of the 
 Universe, and from thence projects the light radiating from 
 the depths of his own mind ; as scorching and intense as 
 the concentrated solar ray. Hence that terrible unity which 
 only the superficial reader could mistake for monotony. 
 
 Byron appears at the close of one epoch, and before the 
 dawn of the other ; in the midst of a community based 
 upon an aristocracy which has outlived the vigour of its 
 prime ; surrounded by a Europe containing nothing grand, 
 unless it be Napoleon on one side and Pitt on the other, 
 genius degraded to minister to egotism ; intellect bound to 
 the service of the past. No seer exists to foretell the 
 future : belief is extinct ; there is only its pretence : prayer 
 is no more ; there is only a movement of the lips at a fixed 
 day or hour, for the sake of the family, or what is called the 
 people : love is no more ; desire has taken its place ; the 
 holy warfare of ideas is abandoned ; the conflict is that of 
 interests. The worship of great thoughts has passed away. 
 That which is, raises the tattered banner of some corpse- 
 like traditions ; that which would be, hoists only the 
 standard of physical wants, of material appetites : around 
 him are ruins, beyond him the desert; the horizon is a 
 blank. A long cry of suffering and indignation bursts from 
 the heart of Byron : he is answered by anathemas. He 
 departs ; he hurries through Europe in search of an ideal to
 
 90 MAZZINT. 
 
 adore ; he traverses it distracted, palpitating, like Mazeppa 
 on the wild horse ; borne onwards by a fierce desire ; 
 the wolves of envy and calumny follow in pursuit. He 
 visits Greece ; he visits Italy ; if anywhere a lingering spark 
 of the sacred fire, a ray of divine poetry, is preserved, it 
 must be there. Nothing. A glorious past, a degraded 
 present ; none of life's poetry ; no movement, save that of 
 the sufferer turning on his couch to relieve his pain. 
 Byron, from the solitude of his exile, turns his eyes again 
 towards England; he sings. What does he sing? What 
 springs from the mysterious and unique conception which 
 rules, one would say in spite of himself, over all that escapes 
 him in his sleepless vigil? The funeral hymn, the death- 
 song, the epitaph of the aristocratic idea ; we discovered it, 
 we Continentalists ; not his own countrymen. He takes 
 his types from amongst those privileged by strength, beauty, 
 and individual power. They are grand, poetical, heroic, 
 but solitary; they hold no communion with the world 
 around them, unless it be to rule over it ; they defy alike 
 the good and evil principle ; they " will bend to neither." 
 In life and in death " they stand upon their strength ; " 
 they resist every power, for their own is all their own ; it 
 was purchased by 
 
 ■ " Superior science — penance — daring — 
 
 And length of watching — strength of mind — and skill 
 In knowledge of our fathers." 
 
 Each of them is the personification, slightly modified, of a 
 single type, a single idea — the individual ; free, but nothing 
 more than free ; such as the epoch now closing has made 
 him ; — Faust, but without the compact which submits him 
 to the enemy ; for the heroes of Byron make no such 
 compact. Cain kneels not to Arimanes; and Manfred, 
 about to die, exclaims —
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 91 
 
 c ' The mind, which is immortal, makes itself 
 Requital for its good and evil thoughts — 
 Is its own origin of ill, and end — 
 And its own place and time, its innate sense, 
 When stripped of this mortality, derives* 
 No colour from the fleeting things without, 
 But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy; 
 Born from the knowledge of its own desert." 
 
 They have no kindred : they live from their own life only : 
 they repulse humanity, and regard the crowd with disdain. 
 Each of them says : I have faith in myself; never, / have 
 faith in ourselves. They all aspire to power or to happiness. 
 The one and the other alike escape them ; for they bear 
 within them, untold, unacknowledged even to themselves, 
 the presentiment of a life that mere liberty can never give 
 them. Free they are; iron souls in iron frames, they climb 
 the alps of the physical world as well as the alps of thought; 
 still is their visage stamped with a gloomy and ineffaceable 
 sadness ; still is their soul — whether, as in Cain and 
 Manfred, it plunge into the abyss of the infinite, "intoxi- 
 cated with eternity," or scour the vast plain and boundless 
 ocean with the Corsair and Giaour — haunted by a secret and 
 sleepless dread. It seems as if they were doomed to drag 
 the broken links of the chain they have burst asunder, 
 rivetted to their feet. Not only in the petty society against 
 which they rebel does their soul feel fettered and restrained; 
 but even in the world of the spirit. Neither is it to the 
 enmity of society that they succumb ; but under the assaults 
 of this nameless anguish ; under the corroding action of 
 potent faculties " inferior still to their desires and their 
 conceptions;" under the deception that comes from within. 
 What can they do with the liberty so painfully won ? On 
 whom, on what, expend the exuberant vitality within them ? 
 They are alone; this is the secret of their wretchedness and
 
 92 MAZZINl 
 
 impotence. They " thirst for good " — Cain has said it for 
 them all — but cannot achieve it ; for they have no mission, 
 no belief, no comprehension even of the world around 
 them. They have never realised the conception of 
 Humanity in the multitudes that have preceded, surround, 
 and will follow after them; never thought on their own 
 place between the past and future; on the continuity of 
 labour that unites all the generations into one Whole ; on 
 the common end and aim, only to be realised by the com- 
 mon effort; on the spiritual post-sepulchral life even on 
 earth of the individual, through the thoughts he transmits 
 to his fellows ; and, it may be — when he lives devoted and 
 dies in faith — through the guardian agency he is allowed to 
 exercise over the loved ones left on earth. 
 
 Gifted widi a liberty they know not how to use ; with a 
 power and energy they know not how to apply ; with a life 
 whose purpose and aim they comprehend not ; — they drag 
 through their useless and convulsed existence. Byron 
 destroys them one after the other, as if he were the 
 executioner of a sentence decreed in heaven. They fall 
 unwept, like a withered leaf into the stream of time. 
 
 "Nor earth nor sky shall yield a single tear, 
 Nor cloud shall gather more, nor leaf shall fall, 
 Nor gale breathe forth one sigh for thee, for all." 
 
 They die, as they have lived, alone ; and a popular 
 malediction hovers round their solitary tombs. 
 
 This, for those who can read with the soul's eyes, is what 
 Byron sings ; or rather what Humanity sings through him. 
 The emptiness of the life and death of solitary individuality 
 has never been so powerfully and efficaciously summed up 
 as in the pages of Byron. The crowd do not comprehend 
 him : they listen ; fascinated for an instant ; then repent, 
 and avenge their momentary transport by calumniating and
 
 B YR ON AND G E THE. g 3 
 
 insulting the poet. His intuition of the death of a form of 
 society they call wounded self-love ; his sorrow for all is 
 misinterpreted as cowardly egotism. They credit not the 
 traces of profound suffering revealed by his lineaments ; 
 they credit not the presentiment of a new life which from 
 time to time escapes his trembling lips ; they believe not in 
 the despairing embrace in which he grasps the material 
 universe — stars, lakes, alps, and sea — and identifies himself 
 with it, and through it with God, of whom — to him at least 
 — it is a symbol. They do, however, take careful count of 
 some unhappy moments, in which, wearied out by the 
 emptiness of life, he has raised — with remorse I am sure — ■ 
 the cup of ignoble pleasures to his lips, believing he might 
 find forgetfulness there. How many times have not his 
 accusers drained this cup, without redeeming the sin by a 
 single virtue ; without — I will not say bearing — but without 
 having even the capacity of appreciating the burden which 
 weighed on Byron ! And did he not himself dash into 
 fragments the ignoble cup, so soon as he beheld something 
 worthy the devotion of his life ? 
 
 Goethe — individuality in its objective life — having, like 
 Byron, a sense of the falsehood and evil of the world around 
 him — followed exactly the opposite path. After having — he, 
 too, in his youth — uttered a cry of anguish in his Werther ; 
 after having laid bare the problem of the epoch in all its 
 terrific nudity, in Faust ; he thought he had done enough, 
 and refused to occupy himself with its solution. It is 
 possible that the impulse of rebellion against social wrong 
 and evil which burst forth for an instant in Werther may 
 long have held his soul in secret travail ; but that he 
 despaired of the task of reforming it as beyond his powers. 
 He himself remarked in his later years, when commenting 
 on the exclamation made by a Frenchman on first seeing
 
 94 MAZZIN1. 
 
 him : " That is the face of a man who has suffered much; " 
 that he should rather have said : " That is the face of a man 
 who has struggled energetically ; " but of this there remains 
 no trace in his works. Whilst Byron writhed and suffered 
 under the sense of the wrong and evil around him, he 
 attained the calm — I cannot say of victory — but of 
 indifference. In Byron the man always ruled, and even at 
 times overcame the artist : the man was completely lost in 
 the artist in Goethe. In him there was no subjective life ; 
 no unity springing either from heart or head. Goethe is an 
 intelligence that receives, elaborates, and reproduces the 
 poetry affluent to him from all external objects : from all 
 points of the circumference ; to him as centre. He dwells 
 aloft alone ; a mighty Watcher in the midst of creation. 
 His curious scrutiny investigates, with equal penetration and 
 equal interest, the depths of the ocean and the calyx of the 
 floweret. Whether he studies the rose exhaling its eastern 
 perfume to the sky, or the ocean casting its countless 
 wrecks upon the shore, the brow of the poet remains 
 equally calm : to him they are but two forms of the 
 beautiful ; two subjects for art. 
 
 Goethe has been called a Pantheist. I know not in what 
 sense critics apply this vague and often ill-understood word 
 to him. There is a materialist pantheism and a spiritual 
 pantheism ; the pantheism of Spinosa and that of Giordano 
 Bruno; of St. Paul; and of many others; — all different. But 
 there is no poetic pantheism possible, save on the condition 
 of embracing the whole world of phenomena in one unique 
 conception : of feeling and comprehending the life of the 
 universe in its divine unity. There is nothing of this in 
 Goethe. There is pantheism in some parts of Wordsworth ; 
 in the third canto of Childe Harold, and in much of 
 Shelley; but there is none in the most admirable
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 95 
 
 compositions of Goethe ; wherein life, though admirably 
 comprehended and reproduced in each of its successive mani- 
 festations, is never understood as a whole. Goethe is the poet 
 of details, not of unity ; of analysis, not of synthesis. None 
 so able to investigate details ; to set off and embellish minute 
 and apparently trifling points ; none throw so beautiful 
 a light on separate parts ; but the connecting link escapes 
 him. His works resemble a magnificent encyclopaedia, 
 unclassified. He has felt everything; but he has never felt 
 the 7vhole. Happy in detecting a ray of the beautiful upon 
 the humblest blade of grass gemmed with dew ; happy in 
 seizing the poetic elements of an incident the most prosaic 
 in appearance ; — he was incapable of tracing all to a 
 common source, and recomposing the grand ascending 
 scale in which, to quote a beautiful expression of Herder's, 
 " every creature is a numerator of the grand denominator, 
 Nature." How, indeed, should he comprehend these 
 things, he who had no place in his works or in his poet's 
 heart for Humanity, by the light of which conception only 
 can the true worth of sublunary things be determined ? 
 "Religion and politics,''* said he, "are a troubled element 
 for art. I have always kept myself aloof from them as 
 much as possible." Questions of life and death for the 
 millions were agitated around him ; Germany re-echoed to 
 the war-songs of Korner ; Fichte, at the close of one of his 
 lectures, seized his musket, and joined the volunteers who 
 were hastening (alas ! what have not the kings made of 
 that magnificent outburst of nationality !) to fight the battles 
 of their fatherland. The ancient soil of Germany thrilled 
 beneath their tread ; he, an artist, looked on unmoved ; his 
 heart knew no responsive throb to the emotion that shook 
 his country ; his genius, utterly passive, drew apart from the 
 * Goethe and his Contemporaries.
 
 9« MAZZINI. 
 
 current that swept away entire races. He witnessed the 
 French Revolution in all its terrible grandeur, and saw the 
 old world crumble beneath its strokes ; and while all 
 the best and purest spirits of Germany, who had mistaken 
 the death-agony of the old world for the birth-throes of 
 a new, were wringing their hands at the spectacle of 
 dissolution ; — he saw in it only the subject of a farce. He 
 beheld the glory and the fall of Napoleon ; he witnessed 
 the reaction of down-trodden nationalities — sublime pro- 
 logue of the grand epopee of the Peoples destined sooner 
 or later to be unfolded — and remained a cold spectator. 
 He had neither learned to esteem men, to better them, nor 
 even to suffer with them. If we except the beautiful type 
 of Berlichingen, a poetic inspiration of his youth, man, as 
 the creature of thought and action ; the artificer of the 
 future, so nobly sketched by Schiller in his dramas, has no 
 representative in his works. He has carried something of 
 this nonchalance even into the manner in which his heroes 
 conceive love. Goethe's altar is spread with the choicest 
 flowers, the most exquisite perfumes, the first fruits of 
 nature ; but the Priest is wanting. In his work of second 
 creation — for it cannot be denied that such it was — he has 
 gone through the vast circle of living and visible things ; 
 but stopped short before the seventh day. God withdrew 
 from him before that time ; and the creatures the Poet has 
 evoked wander within the circle, dumb and prayerless ; 
 awaiting until the man shall come to give them a name, and 
 appoint them to a destination. 
 
 No, Goethe is not the poet of Pantheism; he is a 
 polytheist in his method as an artist; the pagan poet of 
 modern times. His world is, above all things, the world of 
 forms : a multipled Olympus. The Mosaic heaven and the 
 Christian are veiled to him. Like the Pagans he parcels
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 97 
 
 out Nature into fragments, and makes of each a divinity ; 
 like them, he worships the sensuous rather than the ideal ; 
 he looks, touches, and listens far more than he feels. And 
 what care and labour are bestowed upon the plastic portion 
 of his art ! what importance is given — I will not say to the 
 objects themselves — but to the external representation of 
 objects! Has he not somewhere said that "the Beautiful 
 is the result of happy position?"* 
 
 Under this definition is concealed an entire system of 
 poetic materialism, substituted for the worship of the ideal ; 
 involving a whole series of consequences, the logical result 
 of which was to lead Goethe to indifference, that moral 
 suicide of some of the noblest energies of genius. The 
 absolute concentration of every faculty of observation on 
 each of the objects to be represented, without relation to the 
 ensemble ; the entire avoidance of every influence likely to 
 modify the view taken of that object, became in his hands 
 one of the most effective means of art. The poet, in his 
 eyes, was neither the rushing stream, a hundred times 
 broken on its course, that it may carry fertility to the 
 surrounding country ; nor the brilliant flame, consuming 
 itself in the light it sheds around while ascending to 
 heaven ; but rather the placid lake, reflecting alike the 
 tranquil landscape and the thunder-cloud ; its own surface 
 the while unruffled even by the lightest breeze. A serene 
 and passive calm, with the absolute clearness and distinct- 
 ness of successive impressions, in each of which he was for 
 the time wholly absorbed, are the peculiar characteristics of 
 Goethe. " I allow the objects I desire to comprehend, to 
 act tranquilly upon me," said he ; " I then observe the 
 impression I have received from them, and I endeavour to 
 
 * In the Kunst und Alterthum, I think. 
 
 34 2
 
 98 MAZZINI. 
 
 render it faithfully." Goethe has here portrayed his every 
 feature to perfection. He was in life such as Madame 
 Von Armin proposed to represent him after death ; a 
 venerable old man, with a serene, almost radiant counten- 
 ance ; clothed in an antique robe, holding a lyre resting on 
 his knees, and listening to the harmonies drawn from it 
 either by the hand of a genius, or the breath of the winds. 
 The last chords wafted his soul to the East ; to the land of 
 inactive contemplation. It was time : Europe had become 
 too agitated for him. 
 
 Such were Byron and Goethe in their general character- 
 istics ; both great poets ; very different, and yet, complete 
 as is the contrast between them, and widely apart as are 
 the paths they pursue, arriving at the same point. Life and 
 death, character and poetry, everything is unlike in the two, 
 and yet the one is the complement of the other. Both are 
 the children of fatality — for it is especially at the close of 
 epochs that the providential law which directs the genera- 
 tions, assumes towards individuals the semblance of fatality 
 ■ — and compelled by it unconsciously to work out a great 
 mission. Goethe contemplates the world in parts, and 
 delivers the impressions they make upon him, one by one, 
 as occasion presents them. Byron looks upon the world 
 from a single comprehensive point of view ; from the height 
 of which he modifies in his own soul the impressions pro- 
 duced by external objects, as they pass before him. Goethe 
 successively absorbs his own individuality in each of the 
 objects he reproduces. Byron stamps every object he 
 portrays with his own individuality. To Goethe, Nature is 
 the symphony ; to Byron it is the prelude. She furnishes 
 to the one the entire subject ; to the other the occasion 
 only of his verse. The one executes her harmonies ; the 
 other composes on the theme she has suggested. Goethe
 
 BYRON AND GOETITE. 99 
 
 better expresses lives ; Byron life. The one is more vast ; 
 the other more deep. The first searches everywhere for the 
 beautiful, and loves, above all things, harmony and repose ; 
 the other seeks the sublime, and adores action and force. 
 Characters, such as Coriolanus or Luther, disturbed Goethe. 
 I know not if, in his numerous pieces of criticism, he has 
 ever spoken of Dante ; but assuredly he must have shared 
 the antipathy felt for him by Sir Walter Scott ; and although 
 he would undoubtedly have sufficiently respected his genius 
 to admit him into his Pantheon, yet he would certainly have 
 drawn a veil between his mental eye and the grand but 
 sombre figure of the exiled seer, who dreamed of the future 
 empire of the world for his country, and of the world's 
 harmonious development under her guidance. Byron loved 
 and drew inspiration from Dante. He also loved Washing- 
 ton and Franklin, and followed, with all the sympathies of 
 a soul athirst for action, the meteor-like career of the 
 greatest genius of action our age has produced, Napoleon ; 
 feeling indignant — perhaps mistakenly — that he did not die 
 in the struggle. 
 
 When travelling in that second fatherland of all poetic 
 souls — Italy — the poets still pursued divergent routes ; the 
 one experienced sensations; the other emotions ; the one 
 occupied himself especially with nature ; the other with the 
 greatness dead, the living wrongs, the human memories.* 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding all the contrasts, which I have 
 only hinted at, but which might be far more elaborately 
 
 * The contrast between the two poets is nowhere more strikingly 
 displayed than by the manner in which they were affected by the sight 
 of Rome. In Goethe's Elegies and in his Travels in Italy we find the 
 impressions of the artist only. He did not understand Rome. The 
 eternal synthesis that, from the heights of the Capitol and St. Peter, is 
 gradually unfolded in ever-widening circles, embracing first a nation 
 and then Europe, as it will ultimately embrace Humanity, remained.
 
 ioo MAZZINI. 
 
 displayed by extracts from their works ; they arrived — ■ 
 Goethe, the poet of individuality in its objective life — at the 
 egotism of indifference ; Byron — the poet of individuality in 
 its subjective life — at the egotism (I say it with regret, but 
 it, too, is egotism) of despair : a double sentence upon the 
 epoch which it was their mission to represent and to close ! 
 Both of them — I am not speaking of their purely literary 
 merits, incontestable and universally acknowledged — the 
 one by the spirit of resistance that breathes through all his 
 creations ; the other by the spirit of sceptical irony that 
 
 unrevealed to him ; he saw only the inner circle of paganism ; the least 
 prolific, as well as least indigenous. One might fancy that he caught a 
 glimpse of it for an instant, when he wrote : — " History is read here 
 far otherwise than in any other spot in the Universe ; elsewhere we 
 read it from without to within ; here one seems to read it from within 
 to without ; " but if so, he soon lost sight of it again, and became 
 absorbed in external nature. " Whether we halt or advance, we 
 discover a landscape ever renewing itself in a thousand fashions. We 
 have palaces and ruins ; gardens and solitudes ; the horizon lengthens 
 in the distance, or suddenly contracts; huts and stables, columns and 
 triumphal arches, all lie pele mele, and often so close that we might 
 find room for all on the same sheet of paper." 
 
 At Rome Byron forgot passions, sorrows, his own individuality, all, 
 in the presence of a great idea; witness this utterance of a soul born for 
 devotedness : — 
 
 "O Rome ! my country ! city of the soul ! 
 
 The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 
 Lone mother of dead empires ! and control 
 In their shut breasts their petty misery." 
 
 When at last he came to a recollection of himself and his position, it 
 was with a hope for the world (stanza 98) and a pardon for his enemies. 
 From the 4th canto of Childe Harold, the daughter of Byron might 
 learn more of the true spirit of her father than from all the reports she 
 may have heard, and all the many volumes that have been written upon 
 him.
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 101 
 
 pervades his works, and by the independent sovereignty 
 attributed to art over all social relations — greatly aided the 
 cause of intellectual emancipation, and awakened in men's 
 minds the sentiment of liberty. Both of them — the one, 
 directly, by the implacable war he waged against the vices 
 and absurdities of the privileged classes, and indirectly, by 
 investing his heroes with all the most brilliant qualities of 
 the despot, and then dashing them to pieces as if in anger ; 
 — the other, by the poetic rehabilitation of forms the most 
 modest, and objects the most insignificant, as well as by the 
 importance attributed to details — combated aristocratic pre- 
 judices, and developed in men's minds the sentiment of 
 equality. And having by their artistic excellence exhausted 
 both forms of the poetry of individuality, they have com- 
 pleted the cycle of its poets ; thereby reducing all followers 
 in the same sphere to the subaltern position of imitators, and 
 creating the necessity of a new order of poetry ; teaching us 
 to recognise a want where before we felt only a desire. 
 Together they have laid an era in the tomb ; covering it 
 with a pall that none may lift ; and, as if to proclaim its 
 death to the young generation, the poetry of Goethe has 
 written its history, while that of Byron has graven its epitaph. 
 And now farewell to Goethe ; farewell to Byron ! fare- 
 well to the sorrows that crush but sanctify not — to the 
 poetic flame that illumines but warms not — to the ironical 
 philosophy that dissects without reconstructing — to all poetry 
 which, in an age where there is so much to do, teaches us 
 inactive contemplation ; or which, in a world where there is 
 so much need of devotedness, would instil despair. Fare- 
 well to all types of power without an aim ; to all personifi- 
 cations of the solitary individuality which seeks an aim to 
 find it not, and knows not how to apply the life stirring 
 within it; — to all egotistic joys and griefs —
 
 102 MAZZLN1. 
 
 " Bastards of the soul ; 
 O'erweening slips of idleness : weeds ; — no more — 
 Self-springing here and there from the rank soil ; 
 O'erflowings of the lust of that same mind 
 Whose proper issue and determinate end, 
 When wedded to the love of things divine, 
 Is peace, complacency, and happiness." 
 
 Farewell, a long farewell to the past ! The dawn of the 
 future is announced to such as can read its signs, and we 
 owe ourselves wholly to it. 
 
 The duality of the middle ages,' after having struggled for 
 centuries under the banners of Emperor and Pope ; after 
 having left its trace and borne its fruit in every branch of 
 intellectual development ; has reascended to heaven — its 
 mission accomplished — in the twin flames of poesy called 
 Goethe and Byron. Two hitherto distinct formulae of life 
 became incarnate in these two men. Byron is isolated 
 man, representing only the internal aspect of life ; Goethe 
 isolated man, representing only the external. 
 
 Higher than these two incomplete existences ; at the 
 point of intersection between the two aspirations towards a 
 heaven they were unable to reach, will be revealed the 
 poetry of the future ; of humanity ; potent in new harmony, 
 unity, and life. 
 
 But because, in our own day, we are beginning, though 
 vaguely, to foresee this new social poetry, which will soothe 
 the suffering soul by teaching it to rise towards God through 
 Humanity ; because we now stand on the threshold of a 
 new epoch, which, but for them, we should not have 
 reached ; — shall we decry those who were unable to do 
 more for us than cast their giant forms into the gulf that 
 held us all doubting and dismayed on the other side ? 
 .From the earliest times has genius been made the scapegoat 
 of the generations. Society has never lacked men who
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 103 
 
 have contented themselves with reproaching the Chattertons 
 of their day with not being patterns of self-devotion, instead 
 of physical or moral suicides; without ever asking them- 
 selves whether they had, during their lifetime, endeavoured 
 to place aught within the reach of such but doubt and 
 destitution. I feel the necessity of protesting earnestly 
 against the reaction set on foot by certain thinkers against 
 the mighty-souled, which serves as a cloak for the cavilling 
 spirit of mediocrity. There is something hard, repulsive, 
 and ungrateful in the destructive instinct which so often 
 forgets what lias been done by the great men who preceded 
 us, to demand of them merely an account of what more 
 might have been done. Is the pillow of scepticism so soft 
 to genius as to justify the conclusion that it is from egotism 
 only that at times it rests its fevered brow thereon ? Arc 
 we so free from the evil reflected in their verse as to have a 
 right to condemn their memory ? That evil was not intro- 
 duced into the world by them. They saw it, felt it, respired 
 it ; it was around, about, on every side of them, and they 
 were its greatest victims. How could they avoid reproducing 
 it in their works ? It is not by deposing Goethe or Byron 
 that we shall destroy either sceptical or anarchical indiffer- 
 ence amongst us. It is by becoming believers and organ- 
 isers ourselves. If we are such, we need fear nothing. As 
 is the public, so will be the poet. If we revere enthusiasm, 
 the fatherland, and humanity ; if our hearts are pure, and 
 our souls steadfast and patient, the genius inspired to inter- 
 pret our aspirations, and bear to heaven our ideas and our 
 sufferings, will not be wanting. Let these statues stand. 
 The noble monuments of feudal times create no desire to 
 return to the days of serfdom. 
 
 But I shall be told, there are imitators. I know it too 
 well ; but what lasting influence can be exerted on social
 
 104 MAZZINI. 
 
 life by those who have no real life of their own ? They will 
 but flutter in the void, so long as void there be. On the 
 day when the living shall arise to take the place of the dead, 
 they will vanish like ghosts at cock-crow. Shall we never 
 be sufficiently firm in our own faith to dare to show fitting 
 reverence for the grand typical figures of an anterior age ? 
 It would be idle to speak of social art at all, or of the com- 
 prehension of Humanity, if we could not raise altars to the 
 new gods, without overthrowing the old. Those only 
 should dare to utter the sacred name of Progress, whose 
 souls possess intelligence enough to comprehend the past, 
 and whose hearts possess sufficient poetic religion to rever- 
 ence its greatness. The temple of the true believer is not 
 the chapel of a sect ; it is a vast Pantheon, in which the 
 glorious images of Goethe and Byron will hold their 
 honoured place, long after Goctliism and Byronism shall 
 have ceased to be. 
 
 When, purified alike from imitation and distrust, men 
 learn to pay righteous reverence to the mighty fallen, I 
 know not whether Goethe will obtain more of their admira- 
 tion as an artist, but I am certain that Byron will inspire 
 them with more love, both as man and poet — a love 
 increased even by the fact of the great injustice hitherto 
 shown to him. While Goethe held himself aloof from us, 
 and from the height of his Olympian calm seemed to smile 
 with disdain at our desires, our struggles, and our sufferings, 
 — Byron wandered through the world, sad, gloomy, and 
 unquiet; wounded, and bearing the arrow in the wound. 
 Solitary and unfortunate in his infancy ; unfortunate in his 
 first love, and still more terribly so in his ill-advised 
 marriage ; attacked and calumniated both in his acts 
 and intentions, without inquiry or defence ; harassed by 
 pecuniary difficulties ; forced to quit his country, home, and
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 105 
 
 child ; friendless — we have seen it too clearly since his 
 death — pursued even on the Continent by a thousand 
 absurd and infamous falsehoods, and by the cold malignity 
 of a world that twisted even his sorrows into a crime ; he 
 yet, in the midst of inevitable reaction, preserved his love 
 for his sister and his Ada ; his compassion for misfortune ; 
 his fidelity to the affections of his childhood and youth, 
 from Lord Clare to his old servant Murray, and his nurse 
 Mary Gray. He was generous with his money to all whom 
 he could help or serve, from his literary friends down to the 
 wretched libeller Ashe. Though impelled by the temper of 
 his genius, by the period in which he lived, and by that 
 fatality of his mission to which I have alluded, towards a 
 poetic Individualism, the inevitable incompleteness of 
 which I have endeavoured to explain, he by no means set 
 it up as a standard. That he presaged the future with the 
 prevision of genius is proved by his definition of poetry in 
 his journal — a definition hitherto misunderstood, but yet 
 the best I know : " Poetry is the feeling of a former world 
 and of a future." Poet as he was, he preferred activity for 
 good, to all that his art could do. Surrounded by slaves 
 and their oppressors ; a traveller in countries where even 
 remembrance seemed extinct; never did he desert the 
 cause of the peoples ; never was he false to human 
 sympathies. A witness of the progress of the Restoration, 
 and the triumph of the principles of the Holy Alliance, he 
 never swerved from his courageous opposition ; he pre- 
 served and publicly proclaimed his faith in the rights of the 
 peoples and in the final* triumph of liberty. The following 
 
 * " Yet, Freedom ! yet, thy banner torn, but flying, 
 
 Streams, like the thunder-storm, against the wind : 
 Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying, 
 The loudest still the tempest leaves behind.
 
 ioG MAZZINI. 
 
 passage from his journal is the very abstract ot the law 
 governing the efforts of the true party of progress at the 
 present day : " Onwards ! it is now the time to act ; and 
 what signifies self, if a single spark of that which would be 
 worthy of the past* can be bequeathed unquenchably to 
 the future ? It is not one man, nor a million, but the 
 spirit of liberty which must be spread. The waves which 
 dash on the shore are, one by one, broken ; but yet the 
 ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the armada; 
 it wears the rock ; and if the Neptunians are to be believed, 
 it has not only destroyed but made a world." At Naples, 
 in the Romagna, wherever he saw a spark of noble life 
 stirring, he was ready for any exertion ; or danger, to blow 
 it into a flame. He stigmatised baseness, hypocrisy, and 
 injustice, whencesoever they sprang. 
 
 Thus lived Byron, ceaselessly tempest-tossed between the 
 ills of the present and his yearnings after the future ; often 
 unequal ; sometimes sceptical ; but always suffering — often 
 most so when he seemed to laugh ;f and always loving,, 
 even when he seemed to curse. 
 
 Never did "the eternal spirit of the chainless mind" 
 make a brighter apparition amongst us. He seems at 
 times a transformation of that immortal Prometheus, of 
 whom he has written so nobly ; whose cry of agony, yet of 
 futurity, sounded above the cradle of the European world ; 
 
 The tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind, 
 Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth, 
 
 But the sap lasts — and still the seed we find 
 Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North, 
 
 So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth." 
 
 * Written in Italy. 
 
 t ' ' And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 
 'Tis that I may not weep."
 
 BYRON AND GOETHE. 107 
 
 and whose grand and mysterious form, transfigured by lime, 
 reappears from age to age, between the entombment of one 
 epoch and the accession of another; to wail forth the 
 lament of genius, tortured by the presentiment of things it 
 will not see realised in its time. Byron, too, had the 
 "firm will" and the "deep sense;" he, too, made of his 
 " death a victory." When he heard the cry of nationality 
 and liberty burst forth in the land he had loved and sung 
 in early youth, he broke his harp and set forth. While the 
 Christian Powers were protocolising or worse — while the 
 Christian nations were doling forth the alms of a few piles 
 of ball in aid of the Cross struggling with the Crescent ; he, 
 the poet and pretended sceptic, hastened to throw his 
 fortune, his genius, and his life at the feet of the first 
 people that had arisen in the name of the nationality and 
 liberty he loved. 
 
 I know no more beautiful symbol of the future destiny 
 and mission of art than the death of Byron in Greece. 
 The holy alliance of poetry with the cause of the peoples ; 
 the union — still so rare — of thought and action — which 
 alone completes the human Word, and is destined to 
 emancipate the world ; the grand solidarity of all nations in 
 the conquest of the rights ordained by God for all his 
 children, and in the accomplishment of that mission for 
 which alone such rights exist ; — all that is now the religion 
 and the hope of the party of progress throughout Europe, 
 is gloriously typified in this image, which we, barbarians 
 that we are, have already forgotten. 
 
 The day will come when Democracy will remember all 
 that it owes to Byron. England too, will, I hope, one day 
 remember the mission — so entirely English, yet hitherto 
 overlooked by her — which Byron fulfilled on the Continent ; 
 the European role given by him to English literature, and
 
 io8 MAZZINI. 
 
 the appreciation and sympathy for England which he 
 awakened amongst us. 
 
 Before he came, all that was known of English literature 
 was the French translation of Shakespeare, and the 
 anathema hurled by Voltaire against the " intoxicated 
 barbarian." It is since Byron that we Continentalists have 
 learned to study Shakespeare and other English writers. 
 From him dates the sympathy of all the true-hearted 
 amongst us for this land of liberty, whose true vocation he 
 so worthily represented among the oppressed. He led 
 the genius of Britain on a pilgrimage throughout all 
 Europe. 
 
 England will one day feel how ill it is — not for Byron 
 but for herself — that the foreigner who lands upon her 
 shores should search in vain in that Temple which should 
 be her national Pantheon, for the Poet beloved and 
 admired by all the nations of Europe, and for whose death 
 Greece and Italy wept as it had been that of the noblest of 
 their own sons. 
 
 In these few pages — unfortunately very hasty — my aim 
 has been, not so much to criticise either Goethe or Byron, 
 for which both time and space are wanting, as to suggest, 
 and if possible lead, English criticism upon a broader, 
 more impartial, and more useful path than the one 
 generally followed. Certain travellers of the eleventh 
 century relate that they saw at Teneriffe a prodigiously 
 lofty tree, which, from its immense extent of foliage, 
 collected all the vapours of the atmosphere ; to discharge 
 them, when its branches were shaken, in a shower of pure 
 and refreshing water. Genius is like this tree, and the 
 mission of criticism should be to shake the branches. At 
 the present day it more resembles a savage striving to hew 
 down the noble tree to the roots.
 
 ON THE GENIUS AND TENDENCY 
 
 OP THE 
 
 WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ( First published in the "British and Foreign Review," 
 October 1843. ) 
 
 Ur« fiJri If U\ 
 
 I gladly take the opportunity offered by the publication of 
 a new work by Mr. Carlyle, to express my opinion of this 
 remarkable writer. I say my opinion of the writer — of his 
 genius and tendencies, rather than of his books — of the 
 idea which inspires him, rather than of the form with which 
 he chooses to invest it. The latter, in truth, is of far less 
 importance than the former. In this period of transition 
 from doubt to admiration, this "sick and out of joint" 
 time, old ideas die away, or weigh upon the heart liko 
 midnight dreams : young ones spring up to view, bright 
 coloured and fresh with hope, but vague and incomplete, 
 liko the dreams of the morning. We stand wavering 
 between a past whose life is extinct, and a future whose life 
 has not yet begun ; one while discouraged, at another 
 animated by glorious presentiments ; looking through the 
 clouds for some star to guide us. One and all, like Herder, 
 we demand of the instinct of our conscience, a great 
 religious Thought which may rescue us from doubt, a social
 
 no MAZZINI. 
 
 faith which may save us from anarchy, a moral inspiration 
 which may embody that faith in action, and keep us from 
 idle contemplation. We ask this especially of those men in 
 whom the unuttered sentiments and aspirations of the 
 multitudes are concentrated and' harmonised with the 
 highest intuition of individual conscience. Their mission 
 changes with the times. There are periods of a calm and 
 normal activity, when the thinker is like the pure and 
 serene star which illumines and sanctifies with its halo of 
 light that which is. There are other times when genius 
 must move devotedly onward before us, like the pillar of 
 fire in the desert, and fathom for us the depths of that 
 which shall be. Such are our times : we cannot at the 
 present day merely amuse ourselves with being artists, 
 playing with sounds or forms, delighting only our senses, 
 instead of pondering some germ of thought which may serve 
 us. We are scarcely disposed, living in the nineteenth 
 century, to act like that people mentioned by Herodotus, 
 who beguiled eighteen years of famine by playing with dice 
 and tennis-balls. 
 
 The writer of whom I have 1 now to speak, by the nature 
 of his labours and the direction of his genius, authorises 
 the examination I propose to make. He is melancholy 
 and grave : he early felt the evil which is now preying upon 
 the world, and from the outset of his career he proclaimed 
 it loudly and courageously. 
 
 "Call ye that a society," he exclaims, in one of his first 
 publications, "where there is no longer any social idea 
 extant, not so much as the idea of a common home, but 
 only that of a common over-crowded lodging-house 1 
 where each, isolated, regardless of his neighbour, turned 
 against his neighbour, clutches what he can get, and cries 
 'Mine/' and calls it Peace, because in the cut-purse and
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE.wx 
 
 cut-throat scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cun- 
 ninger sort can bo employed — where friendship, communion, 
 has become an incredible tradition, and your holiest sacra- 
 mental supper is a smoking tavern dinner, with cook for 
 evangelist 1 where your priest has no tongue but for plate- 
 licking, and your high guides and governors cannot guide ; 
 but on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed, Laissez- 
 faire / Leave us alone of your guidance — such light is 
 darker than darkness — eat your wages and sleep."* 
 
 Mr. Carlyle, in writing these lines, was conscious that 
 he engaged himself to seek a remedy for the evil, nor has 
 he shrunk from the task. All that he has since written 
 bears more and more evidently the stamp of a high pur- 
 pose. In his Chartism he attempted to grapple with the 
 social question ; in all his writings, whatever be their sub- 
 jects, he has touched upon it in some one of its aspects. 
 Art is to him but as a means. In his vocation as a writer 
 he fills the tribune of an apostle, and it is here that we 
 must judge him. 
 
 A multitude of listeners has gathered around him : and 
 this is the first fact to establish, for it speaks both in 
 favour of the writer and of the public whom he has won 
 over. Since the day when, alone and uncomprehended, he 
 penned the words which we have quoted, Teufelsdrock has 
 made proselytes. The " mad hopes," expressed, with an 
 allowable consciousness of the power which stirred with 
 him, in the last chapter of Sartor Eesartus, has been largely 
 realised. The philosophy of clothes — thanks to the good 
 and bad conduct of the two Dandiacal and Drudge sects — 
 has made some progress. Signs have appeared ; they 
 multiply daily on the horizon. The diameter of the two 
 
 * Sartor Resarlas, book iii., chap. G.
 
 ii2 MAZZTNL 
 
 11 bottomless, boiling whirlpools,"* has widened and widened, 
 as they approach each other in a threatening manner ; and 
 many readers who commenced with a smile of pity, or scorn 
 of the unintelligible and tiresome jargon, the insinuations, 
 half-ironical, half-wild, of the dark dreamer, now look into 
 his pages with the perseverance of the monk3 of Mount 
 Athos, to see whether they cannot there discover the " great 
 thought," of which they themselves begin to feel the want. 
 They now admire as much as they once scorned, — they 
 admire even when they cannot understand. 
 
 Be it so, for this too is good : it is good to see that the 
 great social question, which not long ago was ridiculed, 
 begins to exercise a kind of fascination upon the public 
 mind ; to find that even those whose own powers are not 
 adequate to the task, acknowledge the necessity of some 
 solution of the spinx-like enigma which the times present. 
 It is good to see, by a new example, that" neither ignorant 
 levity nor materialist indifference can long suppress the 
 divine rights of intellect. 
 
 There are differences between Mr. Carlylo's manner of 
 viewing things and my own, which I have to premise ; but 
 I will not do this without first avowing his incontestable 
 merits — merits which at the present day are as important 
 as they are rare, which in him are so elevated as to 
 command the respect and admiration even of those who 
 rank under another standard, and the sympathy and 
 gratitude 'of those who, like myself, are in the main upon 
 the same side, and who differ only respecting the choice of 
 means and the road to pursue. 
 
 Above all, I would note the sincerity of the writer. 
 What he writes, he not only thinks, but feels. He may 
 deceive himself — he cannot deceive us ; for what he says, 
 * Sartor Resarlus, book iii., chap. 10,
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE.xx^ 
 
 even when it is not the truth, is yet true; — his individuality, 
 his errors, his incomplete view of thing3 — realities, and not 
 nonentities — the truth limited, I might say, for error 
 springing from sincerity in a high intellect is no other than 
 such. He seeks good with conscientious zeal, not from a 
 love of fame, not even from the gratification of the dis- 
 covery ; his motive is the love of his fellow-men, a deep and 
 active feeling of duty, for he believes this to be the mission 
 of man upon earth. He writes a book as he would do a 
 good action. Yet more, not only does he feel all he writes, 
 but he writes nearly all that he feels. Whatever is in his 
 thoughts and has not yet been put on paper, we may be 
 sure will sooner or later appear. He may preach the merit 
 of " holding one's tongue ; " — to those, in truth, who do not 
 a<n*ee with him, are such words addressed — but the " talent 
 of silence" is not his; if sometimes he pretend to rever- 
 ence it, it is, as I may say, platonically, to prevent others 
 speaking ill. But in minds constituted like his, compres- 
 sion of thought is impossible ; it must expand, and every 
 prolonged effort made to restrain it will only render the 
 explosion the more violent. Mr. Carlyle is no homceo- 
 pathist ; he never administers remedies for evil in 
 infinitesimal doses ; he never pollutes the sacredness of 
 thought by outward concession or compromise with error. 
 Like Luther, ho hurls his inkstand at the head of the devil, 
 under whatever form he shows himself, without looking to 
 the consequences ; but he does it with such sincerity, such 
 naivete and good-will, that the devil himself could not bo 
 displeased at it, were the moment not critical, and every 
 blow of the inkstand a serious thing to him. 
 
 I know no English writer who has during the last ten 
 years so vigorously attacked the half-gothic, half-pagan 
 edifice which still imprisons the free flight of tho spirit, no 
 
 343
 
 TTI4 MAZZINI. 
 
 one who has thrown among a public much addicted to 
 routine and formalism, so many bold negations, so many 
 religious and social views, novel and contrary to any 
 existing ones, yet no one who excites less of hostility 
 and animadversion. There is generally so much candour 
 and impartiality in his attacks, so much conviction in 
 his thoughts, so entire an absence of egotism, that we are 
 compelled to listen to what, if uttered by any other man 
 with anger or contempt, would excite a storm of opposition. 
 There is never anger in the language of Mr. Carlyle ; disdain 
 he has, but without bitterness, and when it gleams across 
 his pages it speedily disappears under a smile of sorrow and 
 of pity, the rainbow after a storm. He condemns because 
 there are things which neither heaven nor earth can 
 justify ; but his reader always feels that it is a painful duty 
 he fulfds. When he says to a creed or to an institution, 
 " You are rotten — begone ! " he has always some good 
 word upon what it has achieved in the past, upon its utility, 
 sometimes even upon its inutility. He never buries without 
 an epitaph — " Valeat quantum valere protest? Take as an 
 instance, above all, his History of the French Revolution. 
 
 I place in the second rank his tendencies toward the ideal 
 — that which I shall call, for want of a better word, his 
 spiritualism. He is the most ardent and powerful corn^ 
 batant of our day in that reaction, which is slowly working 
 against the strong materialism that for a century and a 
 half has maintained a progressive usurpation, one while in 
 the writings of Locke, Bolingbroke, or Pope, at another in 
 those of Smith and Bentham, and has tended, by its doc- 
 trines of self-interest and material well-being, to the 
 enthronement of selfishness in men's hearts. All the 
 movement of industrial civilization, which has ovcrflooded 
 intellectual and moral civilisation, has not deafened him,
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. \\< 
 
 .) 
 
 Amidst the noise of machinery, wheels, and steam-engines, 
 he has been able to distinguish the stifled plaint of the 
 prisoned spirit, the sigh of millions, in whose hearts the 
 voice of God whispers at times, " Be men ! " and the voice 
 of society too often cries, " In the name of Production, be 
 brutes ! " and he is come, with a small number of chosen 
 spirits, to be their interpreter. He declares that all the 
 bustle of matter and of industry in movement does not 
 weigh against the calm, gentle, and divine whisper that 
 speaks from the depths of a virtuous soul, even when found 
 in the lowest grade of mere machine-tenders ; that the 
 producer, not the production, should form the chief object of 
 social institutions ; that the human soul, not the body, should 
 be the starting-point of all our labours, since the body with- 
 out the soul is but a carcase ; whilst the soul, wherever it is 
 found free and holy, is sure to mould for itself such a body 
 as its wants and vocation require. 
 
 In all his writings, in Sartor Besartus, in his Lectures, 
 in his Essays especially (some of which appear to me to be 
 among the best of Mr. Carlyle's writings), the standard of 
 the ideal and divine is boldly unfurled. He seeks to 
 abolish nothing, but he desires this truth to be acknow- 
 ledged and proclaimed, that it is the invisible which governs 
 the visible, the spiritual life which informs the exterior; be 
 desires that the universe should appear, not as a vast 
 workshop of material production (whether its tendency be 
 to centre, as at the present day, in the hands of a few, or (o 
 spread, according to the Utopian schemes of Owen or 
 Fourier, among the whole community), but as a temple, in 
 which man, sanctified by suffering and toil, studies the 
 infinite in the finite, and walks on toward his object in 
 faith and in hope, with eyes turned constantly toward 
 heaven. Toward this heaven the thought of the writer
 
 n6 MAZZINL 
 
 soars continually with fervour, sometimes even with a kind 
 of despair. It is a reflection of this heaven, the image of 
 the sun in the dew-drops, which he seeks in terrestrial 
 objects. He penetrates the symbol to arrive at the idea : 
 he seeks God through visible forms, the soul through the 
 external manifestations of its activity. We feel that 
 wherever he found the first suppressed, the second extin- 
 guished, he would see nothing left in the world but idolatry, 
 falsehood, things to despise and to destroy. For him, a3 
 for all who have loved, and suffered, and have not lost in 
 the selfish pursuit of material gratifications the divine 
 sense which makes us men — it is a profound truth that 
 " we live, we walk, and we are in God." Hence his 
 reverence for nature, — hence the universality of his 
 sympathies, prompt to seize the poetical side in all things, 
 — hence, above all, his notion of human life, devoted to 
 the pursuit of duty, and not to that of happiness, — " the 
 worship of sorrow and renunciation," such as he has given 
 it in his chapter " The Everlasting Yea " of Sartor 
 Resartus, and such as comes out in all his works. There 
 are, no doubt, many who will term this a treasure ; there 
 are others who will call it Utopian. I would, however, 
 remind the first that it is not enough to stammer out the 
 sacred words "sacrifice and duty," and to inscribe the 
 name of God upon the porch of the temple, in order to render 
 , the worship real and fruitful : the theory of individual 
 well-being rules incontestibly at the present day, I will 
 not say all our political parties (this it does more than 
 enough, of course), but all our social doctrines, and 
 attaches us all unconsciously to materialism. I would 
 likewise remind the second, that although we have pre- 
 tended for the last fifty years to organise everything with 
 a view to the interests, that is to say, the happiness, of society,
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARL YLE. i 1 7 
 
 we yet see before us a society harassed by ills, by misery, 
 and complaints, in eighteen-twentieths of its members. Is 
 it, then, just, to treat the contrary practice as Utopian 1 
 
 Looking around me, I affirm that the spiritual view which 
 Mr. Carlyle takes of human life is the only good, the only 
 essentially religious one, — and one of extreme importance, 
 here especially, where the very men who battle the most 
 boldly for social progress are led away by degrees to neglect 
 the development of what is highest, holiest, and most im- 
 perishable in man, and to devote themselves to the pursuit 
 of what they call the useful. There is nothing useful but 
 the good, and that which it produces ; usefulness is a con- 
 sequence to be foreseen, not a principle to be invoked. 
 The theory which gives to life, as its basis, a right to well-A 
 being, which places the object of life in the search after\ 
 happiness, can only lead vulgar minds to egotism, noble and I 
 powerful minds to deception, to doubt, and to despair. It 1 
 may indeed destroy a given evil, but can never establish [ 
 the good ; it may dissolve, but cannot re-unite. Whatever 
 name it assumes, in whatever Utopia it may cradle itself, it 
 will invariably terminate in organising war, — war between 
 the governors and the governed in politics, disguised under 
 the name of a system of guarantees, of balance, or of parlia- . 
 mentary majorities — war between individuals in economy, I 
 under the name of free competition {free competition j 
 between those who have nothing and who work for their 
 livelihood, and those who have much and seek a super- 
 fluity !) — war, or moral anarchy, by effacing all social faith 
 before the absolute independence of individual opinion. 
 This is nearly the present state of things in the world — a 
 state from which we must at any cost escape. We must 
 come to the conviction, in this as in all other cases, that 
 there exist no rights but those which result from fulfilment
 
 n8 MAZZ1NI. 
 
 of duty ; that our concernment here below is not to be 
 happy, but to become better : that there 13 no other object 
 in human life than to discover, by collective effort, and to 
 execute, every one for himself, the law of God, without regard- 
 ing individual results. Mr. Carlyle is an eloquent advocate 
 of this doctrine, and it is this which creates his power, for 
 there are, thank God, good instincts enough at the bottom 
 of our hearts to make us render homage to the truth, 
 although failing in its practice, when it finds among us a 
 pure-minded and sincere interpreter. 
 
 I place in the third rank our author's cosmopolitan 
 tendencies, — humanitar fon I would say, if the word were in 
 use ; for cosmopolitanism has at the present clay come to 
 indicate indifference, rather than universality of sym- 
 pathies. He well knows that there is a holy land, in which, 
 under whatever latitude they may be born, men are 
 brethren. He seeks among his equals in intelligence, not 
 the Englishman, the Italian, the German, but the man : 
 he adores, not the god of one sect, of one period, 
 or of one people, but God ; and as the reflex of God upon 
 earth, the beautiful, the noble, the great, wherever he 
 finds it ; knowing well, that whencesoever it beams, it is, or 
 will be, sooner or later, for all. His points of view aro 
 always elevated ; his horizon always extends beyond the 
 limits of country ; his criticism is never stamped with that 
 spirit of nationalism (I do not say of nationality, a thing 
 sacred with us all), which is only too much at work 
 amongst us, and which retards the progress of our 
 intellectual life by isolating it from the universal life, 
 palpitating among the millions of our brethren abroad. 
 He has attached himself earnestly to the literature most 
 endued with this assimilating power, and has revealed it to 
 us. His Essays on Schiller, on Goethe, on Jean Paul,
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 119 
 
 on Werner, his excellent translations from the German, 
 will remain a testimony of the naturalisation which he has 
 given to German literature amongst us ; as the beautiful 
 pages of his lectures on Dante, and some of those which ho 
 has devoted to the French writers, testify the universality 
 of that tendency which I distinguish here as forming the 
 third characteristic of his mind. 
 
 To descend to qualities purely literary, Mr. Carlyle is 
 moreover a powerful artist. Since the appearance of his 
 work on the French Revolution, no one can any longer 
 dispute his claim to this title. The brilliant faculties 
 which were revealed in flashes in his previous writings 
 burst out in this work, and it is only a very exalted view 
 of the actual duties of the historian that will enable us to 
 judge it coldly and to remark its defects. He carries his 
 reader along, he fascinates him. Powerful in imagination, 
 which is apt to discover the sympathetic side of things and 
 to seize its salient point — expressing himself in an original 
 style, which, though it often appear whimsical, is yet the 
 true expression of the man, and perfectly conveys his 
 thought — Mr. Carlyle rarely fails of his effect. Gifted 
 with that objectivity of which Goethe has in recent times 
 given us the highest model, he so identifies himself with 
 the things, events, or men which he exhibits, that in his 
 portraits and his descriptions he attains a rare lucidness of 
 outline, force of colouring, and graphic precision ; they are 
 not imitations, but reproductions. And yet he never 
 loses, in the detail, the characteristic, the unity of the 
 object, being, or idea which he wishes to exhibit. He 
 works in the manner of a master, indicating by certain 
 touches, firm, deep, and decisive, the general physiognomy 
 of the object, concentrating the effort of his labour and the 
 intensity of his light upon the central point, or that which
 
 i2o MAZZINI. 
 
 he deems such, and placing this so well in relief that wo 
 cannot forget it. Humour, or the faculty of setting oft 
 small things, after the manner of Jean Paul, abounds in 
 his writings. Beside the principal idea, secondary ideas 
 meet us at every step, often new and important in them- 
 selves, particles of gold scattered upon the shore by the 
 broad wave of the writer's thought. His epithets, although 
 numerous, are seldom without force ; they mark a pro- 
 gression in the development of the idea or the qualities of 
 the object. His diction may have faults; of these I shall 
 not treat here, but I may remark that the charge of 
 obscurity so commonly brought against all thinkers 
 endowed with originality, is, generally speaking, only a 
 declaration of incompetence to comprehend or to judge of 
 their ideas. Moreover, his style is, as I have said, the 
 spontaneous expression of his genius, the aptest form to 
 symbolise his thought, the body shaped by the soul. I 
 would not that it were otherwise ; what I require in all 
 things is, the true man in his unity and completeness. 
 
 Thus frank, honest, and powerful, " ohne Hast, aber 
 ohne Rast, ,} Mr. Carlyle pursues his career : may he long 
 continue it, and reap the honours which he merits, — not 
 for himself so much as for the gratification of those who 
 esteem him, of all those who would see the relations 
 between intelligence and the public drawn more and more 
 close ; and may he thus, in his pilgrimage here, attain the 
 consciousness that the seed which he has scattered has not 
 been given to the wind. 
 
 I have stated sufficiently at large what is absolutely 
 good in the writer I have undertaken to estimate, to allow 
 me freely to fulfil a second duty, that of declaring what 
 appears to me to render this noble talent incomplete, and 
 to vitiate his work by keeping it behind what the
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 121 
 
 times already require elsewhere, and will soon require 
 here. 
 
 It is a very important question (too important for the 
 few pages I can here devote to it) that I must now glance 
 at : upon it depends the question of the duty imposed at 
 the present time on the whole world. It appears to mc 
 that the tendency of Mr. Carlyle's genius, hitherto appre- 
 ciated from only one point of view, — Tory, Whig, or 
 sectarian, — well deserves that we should seek to appreciate 
 it from the point of view of the future, from which all the 
 present transitionary parties are excluded. 
 
 There is but one defect in Mr. Carlyle, in my opinion, 
 but that one is vital : it influences all he does, it determines 
 all his views ; for logic and system rule the intellect even 
 when the latter pretends to rise the most against them. Ii 
 refer to his view of the collective intelligence of our times. ' 
 
 That which rules the period which is now commencing, 
 in all its manifestations ; that which makes every one at \ 
 the present day complain, and seek good as well as bad 
 remedies — that which everywhere tends to substitute, in 
 politics, democracy for governments founded upon privilege 
 — in social economy, association for unlimited competition 
 — in religion, the spirit of universal tradition for the 
 solitary inspiration of the conscience — is the work of an 
 idea which not only alters the aim but changes the starting- 
 point of human activity ; it is the collective thought seeking 
 to supplant the individual thought in the social organism ; 
 the spirit of Humanity visibly substituting itself (for it 
 has been always silently and unperceived at work) for the 
 spirit of man. 
 
 In the past, we studied one by one the small leaves of 
 the calix, the petals of the corolla ; at the present day our 
 attention is turned to the full expansion of the flower.
 
 122 MAZZINI. 
 
 Two thousand years, from the earliest times of Greece 
 clown to the latest work of pagan Rome, worked out 
 Individuality under one of its phases ; eighteen centuries 
 have enlightened and developed it under the other. At 
 the present day other horizons reveal themselves — we leave 
 the individual for the species. The instrument is organ- 
 ised ; we seek for it a law of activity and an outward 
 object. From the point of view of the individual we have 
 gained the idea of right ; we have worked out (were it only 
 in thought) liberty and equality — the two great guarantees 
 of all personality: we proceed further — we stammer out 
 the words Duty — that is to say, something which can only 
 be derived from the general law — and association — that is to 
 say, something which requires a common object, a common 
 belief. The prolonged plaint of millions crushed beneath 
 the wheels of competition has warned us that freedom of 
 labour does not suffice to render industry what it ought to 
 be, the source of material life to the state in all its mem- 
 bers : the intellectual anarchy to which we are a prey has 
 shown us that liberty of conscience does not sulfice to render 
 religion the source of moral life to the state in all its 
 members. 
 
 We have begun to suspect, not only that there is upon 
 the earth something greater, more holy, more divine than 
 the individual — namely, Humanity — the collective Being 
 always living, learning, advancing toward God, of which 
 we are but the instruments ; but that it is alone from the 
 summit of this collective idea, from the conception of the 
 Universal Mind, " of which," as Emerson says, " each indi- 
 vidual man is one more incarnation," that we can derive 
 our mission, the rule of our life, the aim of our societies. 
 "We labour at this at the present day. It signifies little 
 that our first essays are strange aberrations : it signifies
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 123 
 
 little that the doctrines of St. Simon, of Owen, of Fourier, 
 and others who have risen, or shall arise, may be 
 condemned to ridicule. That which is important is the 
 idea common to all these doctrines, and the breath of which 
 has rendered them fruitful ; it is the object which they all 
 instinctively propose, the starting-point they take. 
 
 Half-a-century ago, all the boldest and most innovating 
 theories sought in the organisation of Societies guarantees 
 for free individual action ; the State was in their eyes only 
 the power of all directed to the support of the rights of 
 each ; at the present day, the most timid reformers start 
 with asocial principle to define the part of the individual, — ■ 
 with the admission of a general law, of which they seek the 
 best interpreter and best application. What, in the 
 political world, are all these tendencies to centralisation, to 
 'universal suffrage, to the annihilation of castes? Whence 
 arise, in the religious world, all these discontents, all this 
 retrogression toward the past, all these aspirations toward 
 the future, confused and uncertain, it is true, but wide, 
 tolerant, and reconciliatory of creeds at present opposed 1 
 Why is history, which in old times was satisfied with 
 relating the deeds of princes or of ruling bodies of men, 
 directed at the present clay so much to the masses, and 
 why does it feel the necessity of descending from the 
 summits of society to its base 1 And what means that 
 word Progress, which though understood in a thousand 
 different ways, is yet found on every lip, and gradually 
 becomes from day to day the watchword of all labours 1 
 
 We thirst for unity : we seek it in a new and larger 
 expression of mutual responsibility of all men towards each 
 other, — the indissoluble copartnery of all generations and 
 all individuals in the human race. We begin to com- 
 prehend those beautiful words of St. Paul (Remans xii. 5).
 
 i2 4 MAZZIN1. 
 
 " We being many, are one body in Christ, and every one 
 members one of another." We seek the harmony and 
 meaning of the worth of individuals in a comprehensive 
 view of the collective whole. Such i3 the tendency of th«» 
 present times, and whosoever does not labour in accordance 
 with it, necessarily remains behind. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle comprehends only the individual ; the true 
 sense of the unity of the human race escapes him. He 
 sympathises with all men, but it is with the separate life oC 
 each, and not with their collective life. He readily looks 
 at every man as the representative, the incarnation in a 
 manner, of an idea: he does not believe in a "supreme 
 idea, represented progressively by the development of man- 
 kind taken as a whole. He feels forcibly (rather indeed 
 by the instinct of his heart, which revolts at actual evil, 
 than by a clear conception of that which truly constitutes 
 life) the want of a bond between the men who are around 
 him; he does not feel sufficiently the existence of the 
 greater bond between the generations past, present, and 
 future. The great religious idea, the continued development 
 of Humanity by a collective labour, according to an educa- 
 tional plan designed by Providence, forefelt from age to age 
 by a few rare intellects, and proclaimed in the last fifty 
 years by the greatest European thinkers, finds but a feeble 
 echo, or rather no echo at all, in his soul. Progressive 
 from an impulse of feeling, he shrinks back from the idea as 
 soon as he sees it stated explicitly and systematically ; and 
 such expressions as "the progress of the species," and 
 " perfectibility " never drop from his pen unaccompanied by 
 a taint of irony, which I confess is to me inexplicable. He 
 seems to regard the human race rather as an aggregate of 
 similar individuals, distinct powers in juxtaposition, than as 
 an association of labourers, distributed in groups, and
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 125 
 
 impelled on different paths toward one single object. The 
 idea of the nation itself, the Fatherland, — the second col- 
 lective existence, less vast, but still for many centuries not 
 less sacred than humanity — vanishes, or is modified under 
 his hand ; it is no longer the sign of our portion of labour 
 in the common work, the workshop in which God has placed 
 the instruments of labour to fulfil the mission most within 
 our reach ; it is no longer the symbol of a thought, of a 
 special vocation to be followed indicated by the tradition of 
 the race, by the affinity of tendencies, by the unity of 
 language, by the character of localities, etc. ; it is some- 
 thing reduced, as much as possible, to the proportions of the 
 individual. The nationality of Italy in his eyes is the 
 glory of having produced Dante and Christopher Columbus ; 
 the nationality of Germany that of having given birth to 
 Luther, to Goethe, and to others. The shadow thrown by 
 these gigantic men appears to eclipse from his view every 
 trace of the national thought of which these men were only 
 the interpreters or prophets, and of the people, who alone 
 are its depositary. All generalisation is so repugnant to 
 Mr. Carlyle that he strikes at the root of the error, as he ! 
 deems it, by declaring that the history of the world is / 
 fundamentally nothing more than the biography of great men 
 (Lectures). This is to plead, distinctly enough, against tho 
 idea which rules the movement of the times.* 
 
 In the name of the democratic spirit of the age, I 
 protest against such views. 
 
 * This is the essenco of Mr. Carlyle's ideas, as they appear to mo to 
 be deduciblo from the body of his views and opinions and the general 
 spirit which breathes in his works. Of course we meet here and there 
 with passages in opposition to this spirit, and in accordance with that 
 of the age. It is impossible for a writer of Mr. Carlyle's stamp to 
 avoid this ; but I do not think I can be accused, if my remarks are 
 read with attention, of unfaithfulness in the material poiut.
 
 126 MAZZINI. 
 
 History is not the biography of great men ; the history 
 of mankind is the history of the progressive religion of 
 mankind, and of the translation by symbols, or external 
 actions, of that religion. 
 
 The great men of the earth are but the marking-stones 
 on the road to humanity : they are the priests of its 
 religion. What priest is equal in the balance to the who]*! 
 religion of which he is a minister 1 There is yet something 
 greater, more divinely mysterious, than all the great men 
 — and that is the earth which bears them, the human race 
 which includes them, the thought of God which stirs within 
 them, and which the whole human race collectively can 
 alone accomplish. Disown not, then, the common mother 
 for the sake of certain of her children, however privileged 
 they may be ; for at the same time that you disown her, 
 you will lose the true comprehension of these rare men 
 whom you admire. Genius is like the flower which draws 
 one-half of its life from the moisture that circulates in 
 the earth, and inhales the other half from the atmosphere. 
 The inspiration of genius belongs one-half to heaven, the 
 other to the crowd of common mortals from whose life it 
 springs. No one can rightly appreciate or understand it 
 without an earnest study of the medium in which it lives. 
 
 I cannot, however, here attempt to establish any positive 
 ideas respecting the vocation of our epoch, or the doctrine 
 of collective progress which appears to me to characterise 
 it ; perhaps I may one day take an occasion to trace the 
 history of this doctrine, which, treated as it still is with 
 neglect, reckons nevertheless among its followers men who 
 bore the names of Dante, of Bacon, and of Leibnitz. At 
 present I can only point out the existence of the con- 
 trary doctrine in the writings of Mr. Carlyle ; and the 
 consequences to which, in my opinion, it leads him.
 
 THE WRITINGS, OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 127 
 
 It is evident that, of the two criteria of certainty, 
 individual conscience and universal tradition, between 
 which mankind has hitherto perpetually fluctuated ; and 
 the reconcilement of which appears to me to constitute the 
 only means we possess of recognising truth, Mr. Carlyle 
 adopts one alone — the first. He rejects, or at least wholly 
 neglects, the other. All his views are the logical con- 
 sequences of this choice. Individuality being everything, 
 it must unconsciously reach Truth. The voice of God is 
 heard in the intuition, in the instincts of the soul ; to 
 separate the Ego from every human external agency, and 
 to offer it in native purity to the breath of inspiration from 
 above — this is to prepare a temple to God. God and the 
 individual man — Mr. Carlyle sees no other object in the world. 
 
 But how can the solitary individual approach God, unless 
 \>y transport, by enthusiasm, by the unpremeditated upward 
 flight of the spirit, unshackled by method or calculation ? 
 Hence arises all Mr. Carlyle's antipathy to the labours 
 of philosophy : they must appear to him like the labours 
 of a Titan undertaken with the strength of a pigmy. 
 Of what avail are the poor analytical and experimental 
 faculties of the individual intellect in the solution of 
 this immense and infinite problem? Hence, likewise, his 
 bitter and often violent censure of all those who endeavour 
 to transform the social state as it exists. Victory may 
 indeed justify them, for victory Carlyle regards as the 
 intervention of God by his decree, from which there is no 
 appeal } but victory alone, for where is the man wha can 
 pretend to fore-calculate, to determine this decree? What 
 avails it to fill the echoes with complaint, like Philoctetes ? 
 What avails it to contend convulsively in a hopeless 
 struggle? What is, is. All our endeavours will not alter 
 it before the time decreed ; that time God alone determines.
 
 128 MAZZINI. 
 
 What is to happen God will bring to pass ; very probably 
 by wholly different means from those which we, feeble and 
 ephemeral creatures, may imagine. Point out the evil 
 calmly, wisely ; then resign yourself, trust, and wait ! 
 There is a deep discouragement, a very despair, at the 
 bottom even of Mr. Carlyle's most fervid pages. Ho 
 seems to seek God rather as a refuge than as the source 
 of right and of power : from his lips, at times so daring, 
 we seem to hear every instant the cry of the Breton 
 mariner — " My God, protect me ! My bark is so small 
 and thy ocean so vast ! " 
 
 Now all this is partly true, and nevertheless it is all 
 partly false : true, .inasmuch as it is the legitimate con- 
 sequence from Mr. Carlyle's starting-point ; false from a 
 higher and more comprehensive point of view. If we 
 derive all our ideas of human affairs and labours from the 
 notion of the individual, and see only in social life " the 
 aggregate of all the individual men's live3 " — in history 
 only, " the essence of innumerable biographies " * — if we 
 always place man, singly, isolated, in presence of the 
 universe and of God, we shall have full reason to hold the 
 language of Mr. Carlyle. If all philosophy be in fact, like 
 that of the ancient schools, merely a simple physiological 
 study of the individual, — an analysis, more or less complete, 
 of his faculties, — of what use is it, but as a kind of mental 
 gymnastics ? If our powers be limited to such as each one 
 of us may acquire by himself, between those moments of 
 our earthly career which we call birth and death, they may 
 indeed be enough to attain the power of guessing and of 
 expressing a small fragment of the truth : but who can 
 hope to realise it here 1 
 
 But if we start from the point of view of the collective 
 * Essays — " Sigus of the Times."
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARIYIE. 129 
 
 existence of Humanity, and regard social life as the con- 
 tinued development of an idea by the life of all its 
 individuals, if we regard history as the record of this 
 continuous development in time and space through the 
 works of individuals ; if we believe in the copartnery and 
 mutual responsibility of generations, never losing sight of 
 the fact that the life of the individual is his development in 
 a medium fashioned by the labours of all the individuals 
 who have preceded him, and that the powers of the 
 individual are his powers grafted upon those of all foregoing 
 humanity, — our conception of life will change. Philosophy 
 will appear to us as the science of the Law of life, as " the 
 soul " (Mr. Carlyle himself once uses this expression in con- 
 tradiction to the general spirit of his works), " of which 
 religion, worship is the body." The sorrowful outcry 
 against the actual generation raised by genius, from Byron 
 down to George Sand, and so long unregarded or con- 
 demned, will be felt to be, what it is in truth, the registered, 
 ellicacious protest of the spirit, tormented by presentiments 
 of the future, against a present corrupted and decayed ; and 
 we shall learn that it is not only our right but our duty to 
 incarnate our thought in action. For it matters little that 
 our individual powers be of the smallest amount in relation 
 to the object to be attained ; it matters little that the 
 result of our action be lost in a distance which is beyond 
 our calculation : we know that the powers of millions of 
 men, our brethren, will succeed to the work after us, in the 
 same track, — we know that the object attained, be it when 
 it may, will be the result of all our efforts combined. 
 
 The object — an object to be pursued collectively, an ideal 
 to be realised as far as possible here below by the associa- 
 tion of all our faculties and all our powers — t( operatio 
 hurnanse universitatis," as Dante says in a work little 
 
 344
 
 i 3 o MAZZINI. 
 
 known, or misunderstood, in which, five centuries ago, he 
 laid down many of the principles upon which we are 
 labouring at the present day — " ad quam ipsa universitas 
 hominum in tanta multitudine ordinatur, ad quam quidem 
 operationem nee homo unus, nee domus una, nee vicinia, 
 nee una ci vitas, nee regnum particulare, pertingere 
 potest;"* this alone gives value and method to the life 
 and acts of the individual. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle seems to me almost always to forget this. 
 Being thus without a sound criterion whereby to 
 estimate individual acts, he is compelled to value them 
 rather by the power which has been expended upon them, 
 by the energy and perseverance which they betray, than by 
 the nature of the object toward which they are directed, 
 and their relation to that object. Hence arises that kind 
 of indifference which makes him, I will not say esteem, but 
 love equally men whose whole life has been spent in pursu- 
 ing contrary objects, — Johnson and Cromwell, for example. 
 Hence that spirit of fatalism (to call things by their right 
 names) which remotely pervades his work on the French 
 Revolution, which makes him so greatly admire every 
 manifestation of power and daring, under whatever form 
 displayed, and so often hail, at the risk of becoming an 
 advocate of despotism, might as the token of right. He 
 desires undoubtedly the good everywhere and always; but 
 he desires it, from whatever quarter it may come — from 
 above or from below — imposed by power, or proclaimed by 
 the free and spontaneous impulse of the multitude ; 
 and he forgets that the good is above all a moral question ; 
 that there is no true good apart from the consciousness of 
 good ; that it exists only where it is achieved, not obtained 
 by man ; he forgets that we are not machines from which 
 
 * De Monurchia.
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 131 
 
 as much work as possible is to be extracted, but free agents, 
 called to stand or fall by our works. His theory of the 
 unconsciousness of genius, the germ of which appears in the 
 Life of Schiller, and is clearly denned in his essay 
 "Characteristics," although at first view it may indeed 
 appear to acknowledge human spontaneity, yet does in fact 
 involve its oblivion, and sacrifices, in its application, tho 
 social object to an individual point of view. 
 
 Genius is not, generally speaking, unconscious of what it 
 experiences or of what it is capable. It is not the 
 suspended harp which sounds (as the statue of Memnon in 
 the desert sounds in the sun) at the changing unforeseen 
 breath of wind that sweeps across its strings : it is the 
 conscious power of the soul of a man, rising from amidst 
 his fellow-men, believing and calling himself a son of God, 
 an apostle of eternal truth and beauty upon the earth, tho 
 privileged worshipper of an ideal as yet concealed from the 
 majority : he is almost always sufficiently tormented by his 
 contemporaries to need the consolation of this faith in 
 himself, and this communion in spirit with the generations 
 to come. 
 
 Csesar, Christopher Columbus, were not unconscious : 
 Dante, when, at the opening of the twenty-fifth chapter of 
 the Paradiso, he hurled at his enemies that sublime menace 
 which commentators without heart and without head have 
 mistaken for a cry of supplication, — Kepler, when he wrote, 
 " My book will await its reader : has not God waited six 
 thousand years before He created a man to contemplate 
 His works ? " * Shakespeare himself, when he wrote — 
 
 " Ami nothing stands . . . 
 And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand "t 
 
 * Harmonices Mundi, libri quinque. 
 t Sonnets, 60. See also Sonnets 17, 18, 55, 63, 81, etc.
 
 132 MAZZINI. 
 
 these men were not unconscious : but even Lad ihcy been 
 so, even were genius always unconscious, the question lies 
 not there. It is not the unconsciousness of his own genius 
 that is important to a man, but of that which he proposes 
 to do : it is the consciousness of the object, and not that of 
 the means, which I assert to be indispensable, whenever 
 man has any great thing to accomplish. This conscious- 
 ness pervaded all the great men who have embodied their 
 thought — the artists of the middle a^es who have transferred 
 to stone the aspiration of their souls towards heaven, and 
 have bequeathed to us Christian cathedrals without even 
 graving their names on a corner-stone. 
 
 What then becomes of the anathema hurled by Mr. 
 Oarlyle at philosophy 1 What becomes of the sentence 
 passed with so much bitterness against the restless com- 
 plaints of contemporary writers 1 What is philosophy but 
 the science of aims 1 And is that which he calls the disease 
 of the times, at the bottom aught else than the conscious- 
 ness of a new object, not yet attained 1 I know there are 
 many men who pretend, without right and without reality, 
 that they already possess a complete knowledge of the 
 means. Is it this that he attacks 1 If so, let him attack 
 the premature cry of triumph, the pride, not the plaint. 
 This is but the sign of suffering, and a stimulus to research : 
 as such it is doubly sacred. 
 
 Doubly sacred, I say — and to murmur at the plaint is 
 both unjust and vain ; vain — for whatever we may do, the 
 words " The whole creation groaneth " of the apostle whom 
 I love to quote, will be verified the most forcibly in the 
 choicest intellects, whensoever an entire order of things 
 and ideas shall be exhausted ; whensoever, in Mr. Carlyle's 
 phrase, there shall exist no longer any social faith : — unjust, 
 for while on one side it attacks those who suffer the most,
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 133 
 
 on the other it would suppress that which is the system of 
 the evil, and prevent attention being awakened to it. 
 
 Suffer in silence, do you say 1 No, cry aloud upon the 
 housetops, sound the tocsin, raise the alarm at all risks, for 
 it is not alone your house that is on fire ; hut that of your 
 neighbour, that of every one. Silence is frequently a duty 
 when suffering is only personal ; but it is an error and a 
 fault when the suffering is that of millions. Can we 
 possibly imagine that this complaining, this expression of 
 unrest and discontent which at the present clay bursts out 
 on every side, is only the effect of the personal illusions of 
 a few egoistical writers 1 Do we imagine that there can 
 be any pleasure in parading one's own real suffering 
 before the public 1 It is more pleasant to cause smiles 
 than tears in those around us. But there are times in 
 which every oracle utters words of ill omen ; when the 
 heavens are veiled, and evil is everywhere : how should it 
 not be so in the heart of those whose life vibrates most 
 responsivcly to the pulse of the universal life 1 What ! 
 after proving the evil that surrounds us every instant in 
 our pages, after showing society hastening through moral 
 anarchy and the absence of all belief towards its dissolu- 
 tion, can we expect the features to remain calm ? Are we 
 astonished if the voice trembles, if the soul shudders 1 
 The human mind is disquieted ; it questions itself, listens 
 to itself, studies itself : this is evidently not its normal 
 state. Be it so ; but what is to be done 1 must we abolish 
 thought — deny the intellect the right, the duty, of studying 
 itself, when it is sick 1 This is indeed the tendency of the 
 essay on " Characteristics," one of Mr. Carlyle's most 
 remarkable works. The first part is truly admirable : the 
 evil existing and the principal symptoms are perfectly 
 described ; but the conclusion is most lame and impotent.
 
 134 MAZZINI. 
 
 It ends by commanding us to suppress (how, is not indi- 
 cated) the disquietude, or what he terms the " self- 
 sentience," the " self-survey," the consciousness. Would it 
 not be better to endeavour to suppress the malady which 
 produces it ? 
 
 " Do we not already know " — he says in this same essay 
 — " that the name of the infinite is Good, is God ? Here 
 on earth we are as soldiers, fighting in a foreign land, that 
 understand not the plan of the campaign, and have no need to 
 understand it ; seeing well what is at our hand to be done. 
 Let us do it like soldiers, with submission, with courage, 
 with a heroic joy. ' Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do 
 it with all thy might.' Behind us, behind each one of us, 
 lie six thousand years of human effort, human conquest : 
 before us is the boundless Time, with its as yet uncreated 
 and unconquered continents and Eldorados, which we, 
 even we, have to conquer, to create ; and from the bosom 
 of Eternity shine for us celestial guiding-stars." 
 
 I have quoted this passage, because, approaching as it 
 does near to the truth in the last lines, and contradicting 
 them (in my opinion) in the first, it appears to me to 
 include in essence all the certainties and uncertainties, the 
 " everlasting Yea " and the " everlasting No " of Mr. 
 Oarlyle. God and Duty — these are, in fact, the two sacred 
 words which mankind has in all critical periods repeated, 
 and which at the present day still contain the means of 
 salvation. But we must know in what manner these 
 words are understood. 
 
 We all seek God ; but where, how, with what aim ? 
 This is the question. Seek Him, Mr. Carlyle will say, in 
 the starry firmament, on the wide ocean, in the calm and 
 noble aspect of an heroic man ; above all, in the words of 
 genius and in the depths of your heart, purified from all
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 135 
 
 egoistic passions. God is everywhere : learn to find Him. ■ 
 You are surrounded by His miracles : you swim in the 
 Infinite : the Infinite is also within you. Believf, — you 
 will be better men ; you will be what man should be. 
 
 True indeed — but how create belief 1 This, again, is the 
 question. In all periods of the history of mankind there 
 have been inspired men who have appealed to every generous, 
 great, divine emotion in the human heart, against material 
 appetites and selfish instincts. These men have been 
 listened to ; mankind has believed ; it has, during several 
 centuries, done great and good things in the name of its 
 creeds. Then it has stopped, and ceased to act in harmony 
 with them. Why so 1 Was the thing it had believed, false ? 
 No, it was incomplete : like all human things, it was a 
 fragment of the absolute Truth, overladen with many mere 
 realities belonging to time and place, and destined to 
 disappear after having borne their fruit, as soon as the 
 human intelligence should be ripe for a higher initiation. 
 
 When this period arrives, all mere isolated exhortation 
 to faith is useless. What is preached may be eminently 
 sage and moral ; it may have, here and there, the authority 
 of an individual system of philosophy, but it will never 
 compel belief. It may meet with a sterile theoretic 
 approbation, but it will not command the practice, it will 
 not dictate the action, it will not gain that mastery over 
 the life of men which will regulate all its manifestations. 
 If the contrary were true, there is no religion that could 
 not maintain the harmony of the terrestrial world by the 
 morality which is either developed or involved in it. But 
 there are times in which all individual efi'orts are paralysed by 
 the general apathy, until (by the development of new relations 
 between men, or by calling into action an element hitherto 
 suppressed) we alter the starting-point of social energy,
 
 13& MAZZINI. 
 
 and vigorously arouse tho torpid intellect of the multi- 
 tudes. 
 
 We all seek God ; but we know that here below we can 
 neither attain unto Him, nor comprehend Him, nor 
 contemplate Him : the absorption into God of some of the 
 Brahminical religions, of Plato, and of some modern ascetics, 
 is an illusion that cannot be realised. Our aim is to approach 
 God : this we can do by our works alone. To incarnate, as 
 far as possible, His Word; to translate, to realise His 
 Thought, is our charge here below. It is not by contem- 
 plating His works that we can fullil our mission upon 
 earth : it is by devoting ourselves to our share in the 
 evolution of His work, without interruption, without end. 
 The earth and man touch at all points on the infinite : this 
 we know well, but is it enough to know this ? have we not 
 to march onwards, to advance into this infinite 1 But can 
 the individual finite creature of a day do this, if he relies 
 only upon his own powers 1 It is precisely from having 
 found themselves for an instant face to face with infinity, 
 without calculating upon other faculties, upon other 
 powers, than their own, that some of the greatest intellects 
 of the day have been led astray into scepticism or misan- 
 thropy. Not identifying themselves sufficiently with 
 Humanity, and startled at the disproportion between the 
 object and the means, they have ended by seeing naught but 
 death and annihilation on every side, and have no longer 
 had courage for the conflict. The ideal has appeared to 
 them like a tremendous irony. 
 
 In truth, human life, regarded from a merely individual 
 point of view, is deeply sad. Glory, power, grandeur, all 
 perish — playthings of a day, broken at night. The mothers 
 who loved us, whom we love, are snatched away ; friend- 
 ships die, and we survive them. The phantom of death
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 137 
 
 watches by the pillow of those dear to us : the strongest 
 and purest love would be the bitterest irony, were it not a 
 promise for the future; and this promise itself is but im- 
 perfectly felt by us, such as we are at the present day. 
 The intellectual adoration of truth, without hope of realisa- 
 tion, is sterile : there is a larger void in our souls, a 
 yearning for more truth than we can realise during our 
 short terrestrial existence. Break the bond of continuity 
 between ourselves and the generations which have preceded 
 and will follow us upon the earth, and what then is the 
 devotion to noble ideas but a sublime folly? Annihilate 
 the connecting-link between all human lives ; eflace the 
 infallibility involved in the idea of progression, of collective 
 mankind, and what is martyrdom but a suicide without an 
 object 1 ? Who would sacrifice — not his life, for that is 
 little — but all the days of his life, his affections, the peace 
 of those he loves, for the Fatherland, for human liberty, for 
 the evolution of a great moral thought, when a few years, 
 perhaps a few days, will suffice to destroy it 1 ? Sadness, 
 unending sadness, discordance between the will and the 
 power, disenchantment, discouragement — such is human 
 life, when looked at only from the individual point of view. 
 A few rare intellects escape the common law and attain 
 calmness ; but it is the calm of inaction, of contemplation ; 
 and contemplation here on earth is the selfishness of genius. 
 I repeat, Mr. Carlyle has instinctively all the presenti- 
 ments of the new epoch ; but following the teachings of his 
 intellect rather than his heart, and rejecting ths idea/ 
 of the collective life, it is absolutely impossible for him to 
 find the means of their realisation. A perpetual antagon- 
 ism prevails throughout all he does ; his instincts drive 
 him to action, his theory to contemplation. Eaith and 
 discouragement alternate in his works, as they must in his
 
 138 MAZZINL 
 
 bouI. Ho weaves and unweaves his web, like Penelope : be 
 preacbes by turns life and nothingness ; he wearies out the 
 powers of his readers, by continually carrying them from 
 heaven to hell, from hell to heaven. Ardent, and almost 
 menacing, upon the ground of ideas, he becomes timid and 
 sceptical as soon as he is engaged on that of their applica- 
 tion. I may agree with him with respect to the aim — 
 I cannot respecting the means ; he rejects them all, but he 
 proposes no others. He desires progress, but shows 
 hostility to all who strive to progress : he foresees, he 
 announces as inevitable, great changes or revolutions in the 
 religious, social, political order ; but it is on condition that 
 the revolutionists take no part in them : he has written 
 many admirable pages on Knox and Cromwell, but the 
 chances are that he would have written as admirably, 
 although less truly, against them, had he lived at the 
 commencement of their struggles. 
 
 Give him the past — give him a power, an idea, something 
 which has triumphed and borne its fruits— so that, placed 
 thus at a distance, he can examine and comprehend it from 
 every point of view, calmly, at his ease, without fear of 
 being troubled by it, or drawn into the sphere of its action 
 — and he will see in it all that there is to see, more than 
 others are able to see. Bring the object near to him, and 
 as with Dante's souls in the Inferno, his vision, his faculty 
 of penetration, is clouded. If his judgment respecting the 
 French Revolution be in my opinion very incomplete, the 
 reason is, that the event is yet unconcluded, and that it 
 appears to him living and disturbing. The past has every- 
 thing to expect from him — the present, nothing — not even 
 common justice. Have patience, he says, to those who 
 complain ; all will come to pass, but not in your way: God 
 will provide the means. But through whom, then, will
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 139 
 
 God provide means upon earth, unless by us % Are we not 
 His agents here below? Our destinies are within us: to 
 understand them, we need intellect — to accomplish them, 
 power. And why does Mr. Carlyle assign us the first 
 without the second ? Wherefore does he speak to us at 
 times in such beautiful passages of hope and faith, of the 
 divine principle that is within us, of the duty which calls 
 us to act, and the next instant smile with pity upon all we 
 attempt, and point out to us the night, the vast night of 
 extinction, swallowing up all our efforts 1 
 
 There is. in my opinion, something very incomplete, very 
 narrow, in the kind of contempt which Mr. Carlyle exhibits, 
 whenever he meets in his path with anything that men 
 have agreed to call political reform. The forms of govern- 
 ment appear to him almost without meaning; such subjects 
 as the extension of suffrage, the guarantee of any kind of 
 political right, are evidently in his eyes pitiful things, 
 materialism more or less disguised. What he requires is 
 that men should grow morally better, that the number of 
 just men should increase : one wise man more in the world 
 would be to him a fact of more importance than ten political 
 revolutions. It would be so to me also were I able to 
 create him, as Wagner does his Homunculus, by blowing 
 on the furnaces, — if the changes in the political order of 
 things did not precisely constitute the very preliminary 
 steps indispensable to the creation of the just and wise 
 man. 
 
 I know well enough that there are too many men who 
 lose their remembrance of God in the symbol, who do not 
 go beyond questions of form, but contract a love for them, 
 and end in a kind of liberalism for liberalism's sake. I do 
 not need to enter my protest against this caprice if the 
 reader has paid attention to what I have already said. In 
 
 '
 
 140 MAZZTNL 
 
 my view the real problem which rules all political agitation 
 is one of education. I believe in the progressive moral 
 amelioration of man as the sole important object of all 
 labour, as the sole strict duty which ought to direct us : the 
 rest is only a question of means. But where the liberty 
 of means does not exist, is not its attainment the first thing 
 needful 1 
 
 Take an enslaved country, — Italy, for example, — there 
 we find no education, no press, no public meetings ; but 
 censors, who, after having mutilated a literary journal for 
 j-ears, seeing that it still survives, suppress it altogether;* 
 — archbishops, who preach against all kinds of popular 
 instruction, and declare the establishment of infant schools 
 to be immoral ;f — princes who affix a stamp to all the 
 books allowed to their subjects. % What can be done to 
 ameliorate in such a country the moral and intellectual 
 condition of the people 1 
 
 Take a country of serfs, — Poland or Russia, for example, 
 — how can we set about the attempt to annihilate the 
 odious distinctions only to be destroyed by a revolution? 
 
 Take a man, for instance, who labours hard from foui'- 
 teen to sixteen hours a-day to obtain the bare necessaries of 
 existence ; he eats the bacon and potatoes (when indeed he 
 can get them) in a place which might rather be called a 
 den than a house ; and then, worn out, lies down and 
 sleeps ; he is brutalised in a moral and physical point of 
 view ; he has no ideas but propensities, — not beliefs but 
 instincts; he does not read, — he cannot read: he has not 
 within his reach the least means of self-enlightenment, and 
 
 * The Subalphw, the Lctture Popolari, in Piedmont ; the Antohgia 
 at Florence, etc. 
 t The Archbishop of Turin, Franzoni, in a pastoral lettor. 
 J The Duke of Modena.
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARL YLE. 141 
 
 his contact with the upper class is only the relation of a 
 servant to a master, of a machine to the director of a 
 machine. Of what use are books to such a being? How 
 can you come at him, how kindle the divine spark 
 which is torpid in his soul, how give the notion of life, of 
 sacred life, to him who knows it only by the material 
 labour that crushes him, and by the wages that abase him ? 
 Alas ! this man's name is Million ; he is met with on every 
 side; he constitutes nearly three-fourths of the population 
 of Europe. How will you give him more time and more 
 energy to develop his faculties except by lessening the 
 number of his hours of labour, and increasing his profits. 
 How can you render his contact with the enlightened 
 classes serviceable to him, except by altering the nature of 
 his relations toward them ? How, above all, will you 
 raise his fallen soul, except by saying to him — by telling 
 him — in acts, not in reasonings which he does not under- 
 stand — "Thou, too, art man: the breath of God is in 
 thee : thou art here below to develop thy being under all 
 its aspects ; thy body is a temple ; thy immortal soul is the 
 priest, which ought to do sacrifice and ministry for all 1 " 
 
 And what is this act, this token destined to raise him in 
 his own eyes, to show to him that he has a mission upon 
 earth, to give him the consciousness of his duties and his 
 rights, except his initiation into citizenship — in other 
 words, the suffrage 1 ? What is meant by "re-organising 
 labour," but bringing back the dignity of labour 1 What 
 is a new form, but the case or the symbol — of a new idea 1 
 We perhaps have had a glimpse of the ideal in all its 
 purity — we feel ourselves capable of soaring into the 
 invisible regions of the spirit. But are we, on this account, 
 to isolate ourselves from the movement which is going on 
 among our brethren beneath us 1 Must we be told, " You
 
 142 MAZZINI. 
 
 profane the sanctity of the idea," because the men into 
 whom we seek to instil it are flesh and blood, and we are 
 obliged to speak to their senses 1 Condemn all action, then ; 
 for action is only a form given to thought — its application, 
 practice. " The end of man is an action, and not a 
 thought." Mr. Carlyle himself repeats this in his Sartor 
 Resartm (book ii., ch. G), and yet the spirit which pervades 
 his works seems to me too often of a nature to make his 
 readers forget it. 
 
 It has been asked,* what is at the present day the Duty 
 of which we have spoken so much 1 A complete reply 
 would require a volume, but I may suggest it in a few 
 words. Duty consists of that love of God and man which 
 renders the life of the individual the representation and 
 expression of all that he believes to be the truth, absolute 
 or relative. Duty is progressive, as the evolution of truth , 
 it is modified and enlarged with the ages ; it changes its 
 manifestations according to the requirement of times and 
 circumstances. There are times in which we must be able 
 to die like Socrates ; there are others, in which we must be 
 able to struggle like Washington : one period claims the pen 
 of the sage, another requires the sword of the hero. But 
 here, and everywhere, the source of this Duty is God and 
 His law — its object, Humanity — its guarantee, the mutual 
 responsibility of men — its measure, the intellect of the 
 individual and the demands of the period — its limit, power. 
 
 Study the universal tradition of humanity, with all the 
 faculties, with all the disinterestedness, with all the 
 comprehensiveness of which God has made you capable ; 
 where you find the general permanent voice of humanity 
 agreeing with the voice of your conscience, be sure that 
 you hold in your grasp something of absolute truth — gained, 
 * Mr. Home, in his Preface to Gregory VII.
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 143 
 
 and for ever yours. Study also with interest, attention, 
 and comprehensiveness, the tradition of your epoch and of 
 your nation — the idea, the want, which ferments within 
 them : where you find that your conscience sympathises 
 with the general aspiration, you are sure of possessing the 
 relative truth. Your life must embody both these truths, 
 must represent and communicate them, according to your 
 intelligence and your means : you must be not only man, 
 but a man of your age ; you must act as well as speak ; you 
 must be able to die without being compelled to acknow- 
 ledge, " I have known such a fraction of the truth, I could 
 have done such a thing for its triumph, and I have not done 
 it." Such is duty in its most general expression. As to 
 its special application to our times, I have said enough on 
 this point in that part of my article which establishes my 
 difference from the views of Mr. Carlyle, to render its 
 deduction easy. The question at the present day is the 
 perfecting of the principle of association, a transformation 
 of the medium in which mankind moves : duty therefore 
 lies in a collective labour, — every one should measure his 
 powers, and see what part of this labour falls to him. Tho 
 greater the intellect and influence a man enjoys, the greater 
 his responsibility ; but assuredly contemplation cannot 
 satisfy duty in any degree. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle's idea of duty is naturally different. Think- 
 ing only of individuality, calculating only the powers of tho 
 individual, ho would rather restrict than enlarge its sphere. 
 The rule which he adopts is that laid down by Goethe — ■ 
 u Do the duty which lies nearest thee." And this rule is 
 good in as far as it is, like all other moral rules, susceptible 
 of a wide interpretation, — bad, so far as taken literally, and 
 fallen into the hands of men whose tendencies to self- 
 sacrifice are feeble, it may lead to the justification of
 
 144 MAZZTNT. 
 
 selfishness, and cause that which at bottom should only bo 
 regarded as the wages of duty to be mistaken for duty 
 itself. It is well known what use Goethe, the high-priest 
 of the doctrine, made of this maxim, enshrining himself in 
 what he called "Art," and, amidst a world in misery, 
 putting away the question of Religion and Politics as a 
 "troubled element for Art," though a vital one for man, 
 and giving himself up to the contemplation of forms, and 
 the adoration of self. 
 
 There are at the present day but too many who imagine 
 they have perfectly done their duty, because they are kind 
 towards their friends, affectionate in their families, inoffen- 
 sive toward the rest of the world. The maxim of Goethe 
 and of Mr. Carlyle will always suit and serve such men, by 
 transforming into duties the individual, domestic, or other 
 affections — in other words, the consolations of life. Mr. 
 Carlyle probably does not carry out his maxim in practice ; 
 but his principle leads to this result, and cannot theoretically 
 have any other. " Here on earth we are as soldiers ; " he 
 says : — true, but " we understand nothing, nor do we require 
 to understand anything of the plan of the campaign ; " he 
 adds, — what law, what sure object can we then have for 
 action, excepting those to which our individual instincts lead 
 us 1 Religion is the first of our wants, he will go on to say ; 
 but whilst I hold religion to be a belief and a worship 
 in common ; an ideal, the realisation of which mankind 
 collectively must seek — a heaven, of which the earth must 
 be rendered by our efforts the visible symbol — to him it is 
 only a simple relation of the individual to God. It ought, 
 therefore, according to my view, to preside over the develop- 
 ment of collective life ; according to his view, its only office 
 is to pacify the troubled soul. 
 
 Does it at least lead to this? Is he (I speak of the
 
 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYIE. 145 
 
 writer, of whom alone I have a right to speak) calm 1 No, 
 he is not : in this continual alternation between aspirations 
 as of a Titan and powers necessarily very limited, between 
 the feeling of life and that of nothingness, his powers are 
 paralysed as well as those of his readers. At times there 
 escape from his lips accents of distress, which, whatever 
 he may do, he cannot remove from the minds of thoso 
 who listen to him with attention and sympathy. What 
 else is that incessant and discouraged yearning after 
 rest, which, although lie has formally renounced the 
 happiness of life, pervades all his works — Sartor Resarlus 
 especially — and which so constantly calls to our minds the 
 words of Arnaud to Nicolle, — " N'avons-nous pas toute 
 l'eternitd pour nous reposer 1 " — " Let me rest here, for 
 I am way-weary and life-weary ; I will rest here, were it 
 but to die; to die or to live is alike to me, alike insignifi- 
 cant. . . . Here, then, as I lay in that Centre of 
 Indifference . . . the heavy dreams rolled gradually 
 away."* Alas ! no, poor Teufelsdrock ! there is no repose 
 here on earth. It matters little if the limbs be bruised, 
 the faculties exhausted. Life is a conflict and a march : 
 the " heavy dreams " will return : we are still too low ; the 
 air is still too heavy around us for them to "roll away.'' 
 Strength consists in advancing in the midst and in spite of 
 them — not in causing them to vanish. They will vanish 
 higher up, when, after mounting a step upon the ladder, 
 life shall expand in a purer medium : the flower, too, has 
 its origin and germinates in the earth, to expand only in 
 another element, in the air and sun of God. Meanwhile 
 suffer and act ; suffer for thyself, act for thy brethren, and 
 with them. Speak not ill of science, of philosophy, of 
 
 * Sartor Resarlus, book ii. ch. 9. 
 
 345
 
 146 MAZZINI. 
 
 the spirit of inquiry ; these are the implements which God 
 has given us for our labour, — good or bad, according as 
 they are employed for good or for evil. Tell us no longer 
 that "life itself is a disease — knowledge, the symptom of 
 derangement;" talk no more of a "first state of freedom 
 and paradisiacal unconsciousness."* There is more of 
 what is called Byronism in these few words than, in the 
 whole of Byron. Freedom and paradise are not behind, 
 but before us. Not life itself, but the deviation from life, 
 is disease : life is sacred ; life is our aspiration toward the 
 idea], — our affections, engagements, which will one day be 
 fulfilled, our virtues, a step toward greater. It is blasphemy 
 to pronounce a word of contempt or anger against 
 it. 
 
 The evil at the present day is, not that men assign too 
 much value to life, but the reverse. Life has fallen in 
 estimation, because, as at all periods of crisis and dis- 
 organisation, the chain is broken which in all forms of 
 belief attaches it through humanity to heaven. It has 
 fallen, because the consciousness of mutual human respon- 
 sibility, which alone constitutes its dignity and strength, 
 being lost together with all community of belief, its sphere 
 of activity has become restricted, and it has been compelled 
 to fall back upon material interests, minor passions, and 
 petty aims. It has fallen, because it has been too much 
 individualised ; and the remedy lies in re-attaching life to 
 heaven — in raising it again, in restoring to it the conscious- 
 ness of its power and sanctity. The means consist in 
 retempering the individual life through communion with 
 the universal life ; they consist in restoring to the individual 
 that which I have from the outset called the feeling of the 
 
 * Essays — "Characteristics."
 
 TJJF. WRITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 147 
 
 collective^ in pointing out to him his place in the tradition 
 of the species, in bringing him into communion, by love and 
 by works, with all his fellow-men. By isolating ourselves, 
 we have begun to feel ourselves feeble and little ; we have 
 begun to despise our own efforts and those of our brethren 
 towards the attainment of the ideal ; and we have in 
 despair set ourselves to repeat and comment upon the 
 '• Carpe diem " of the heathen poet ; we must make our- 
 selves great and strong again by association ; we must not 
 discredit life, but make it holy. By persisting to search 
 out the secret, the law of individuality in the individuality 
 itself, man ends only in egotism, if he is evil-minded — in 
 scepticism, in fatalism, or in contemplation, if ho is virtuous. 
 Mr. Carlyle, whatever he may himself think, fluctuates 
 between these last three tendencies. 
 
 The function which Mr. Carlyle at present fulfils in 
 England appears to me therefore important, but incom- 
 plete. Its level is perhaps not high enough for the 
 demands of the age ; nevertheless, it is noble, and nearer to 
 the object which I have pointed out than that perhaps of 
 any other living writer. All that he combats is indeed really 
 false, and has never been combated more energetically ; that 
 which he teaches is not always true. His aspirations belong 
 to the future — the temper and habits of his intelligence 
 attach him to the past. My sympathies may claim the one 
 half of the man — the other half escapes me. All that I 
 regard as important, he considers so also ; all that I fore- 
 see, he foresees likewise. "We only differ respecting the 
 road to follow, the means to be adopted : we serve the 
 same Cod, we separate only in the worship. Whilst I 
 would dive into the midst of present things, in order to 
 draw inspiration from them, while I would mingle with 
 men in order to draw strength from them, he
 
 t 4 8 MAZZINI. 
 
 i would retire to a distance and contemplate. I appeal 
 perhaps more than he to tradition ; he appeals more than I 
 to individual conscience. My theory, perhaps, runs the risk 
 of sacrificing something of the purity of the idea in the 
 pursuit of the means ; he runs the risk, without intending 
 it, of deserting his brother labourers. 
 
 Nevertheless, let each follow his own path. There will 
 always be a field for the fraternity of noble spirits, even if 
 they differ in their notion of the present life. Their out- 
 ward manifestations may vary, but only like the radiations 
 of light upon the earth. The ray assumes different colours, 
 according to the different media through which it passes, 
 according to the surface of the objects upon which it falls ; 
 but wherever it falls, it warms and vivifies more or less 
 visibly, and all the beams proceed from the same source. 
 Like the sun, the fountain of terrestrial light, there is a 
 common element in heaven for all human spirits which 
 possess strong, firm, and disinterested convictions. In this 
 sanctuary of the soul Mr. Carlyle will assuredly commune 
 with all the chosen souls that adore God and truth, and all 
 who have learned to suffer without cursing, and to sacrifice 
 themselves without despair. 
 
 I can but briefly refer to Mr. Carlyle's last work, 
 recently published, entitled Past and Present. I have read 
 it with attention, and with a desire to find cause to alter 
 my opinions. I, however, find nothing to retract : on the 
 contrary, the present work appears to confirm those 
 opinions. Past and Present is a work of power, and will 
 do incalculable good. No one will close its pages without 
 having felt awakened in him thoughts and feelings which 
 would perhaps have still slept long in his heart : yet should 
 the reader desire to open it again, with a view to study 
 how he may realise these sentiments and thoughts in the
 
 THE WAITINGS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 149 
 
 world, he will often, in the midst of eloquent pages, of 
 fruitful truths expressed with an astonishing energy, meet 
 with disappointment. Past and Present is, in my opinion, 
 remarkable rather for the tendencies and aptitudes which 
 it presents, than for the paths which it points out. It is a 
 step toviards the future, not a step in the future. Will 
 Mr. Carlyle take this step ? I. know not, but there is 
 everything to hopo.
 
 ON THE HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 {First published in the ''Monthly Clironiclc") 
 
 The praise bestowed upon this book on its first appearance 
 was, I believe, unanimous. Men of opinions the most 
 diametrically opposed were united in their admiration of the 
 writer, and so far as he was concerned, a truce was formed 
 between the two camps into which society is divided in 
 England as elsewhere. 
 
 This unusual concord was evidence alike of the merits 
 and demerits of the book. It was a mark of homase 
 rendered to the indisputable and potent genius of Thomas 
 Carlyle, and of the general admiration felt for an artistic 
 power and vigour of execution almost unrivalled in this 
 country. But all who are aware how inexorable is party 
 logic, must have understood, from this very unanimity of 
 praise, that the book wa3 regarded as dangerous by none, 
 and that there was a general sense that admiration might 
 be safely expressed, as it involved no risk of serious 
 concession from any side,
 
 CARL YLES FRENCH RE VOL UTLON. 1 5 1 
 
 Now, is it possible that a book on such a subject as tho 
 French Revolution, thus accepted by all parties, can be a 
 work of lasting usefulness, and in no way inferior to the 
 exigences of the times ? 
 
 It is not possible. 
 
 The actual state of society — it is useless to deny it — is a 
 f.tate of war, of active irreconcilable war on every side and 
 in all things ; and at no period, perhaps, has the great 
 struggle — as old as the world itself — between fact and 
 Right, fatalism and Liberty, assumed a character so deep 
 and universal as at present. To those who are capable of 
 tracing the workings of a Principle throughout all its 
 diverse manifestations, this contest is evident in every 
 branch of human development, from industry up to 
 Religion. The Principle of Emancipation is evexy where at 
 work. The French Revolution did not furnish its pro- 
 gramme as has been generally supposed, nor was it even its 
 highest and most mature expression ; but it manifested 
 and revealed it with the intensest energy in the political 
 sphere, and diffused it over the whole of Europe. 
 
 In the French Revolution the spirit of Emancipation 
 became incarnate in a single people, and gave battle to its 
 enemies. The struggle was long, bloody, and destructive, 
 fruitful of great deeds and of great crimes, of Titanic fury 
 and of vital conquest. 
 
 Can any author remain neutral in the presence of two 
 opposing banners in such a contest, without grave fault or 
 error? How is it possible to avoid taking sides in a 
 conflict between such mighty resentments and such mighty 
 hopes? Yet how is an author to make choice of either 
 side, without awakening the anger of those arrayed upon 
 the other 1 
 
 He was hound to remain impartial, you will say.
 
 152 MAZZIN1. 
 
 Undoubtedly : but is there no distinction between 
 impartiality and indifference % 
 
 Impartiality neither excludes earnestness of conviction, 
 nor choice between two adverse camps. It imposes the 
 duty of neither concealing nor embellishing the faults 
 which occasionally sully the banner of Plight, as it does of 
 recording every noble idea or inspiration arising among 
 those ranged beneath the opposite standard. 
 
 But such a love of justice would be insufficient to 
 conciliate for the historian the favour of the party he 
 condemned : it might even embitter their anger against 
 him, as against a judge whose sentence, free from all 
 suspicion of partiality, was less open to appeal. Im- 
 partiality alone, therefore, will not absolve the historian of 
 such a revolution from the blame or rancour of those whose 
 fathers fought either for or against it, and who are them- 
 selves still struggling for or against its consequences. 
 There must be more than this, to win such tolerance from 
 both sides. To obtain it, the historian must, as it were, 
 confine himself within a circle revolving around its own 
 axis, and be content to reproduce the isolated fact detached 
 from its position as a part of the general progress of the 
 people, apart from its relative value, and without any 
 distinctive sign indicating its rank and importance in the 
 collective life of Humanity. Losing sight of all conception 
 of the whole in the analysis of a multitude of particular 
 facts ; forgetting the idea in the symbol, and the principle 
 in its material expression, the historian must limit himself 
 to the mere study of Men, where others would study the 
 Idea for the triumph of which they were consciously or 
 unconsciously labouring. He must regard as the offspring 
 of individual impulse, deeds, which others recognise as 
 having derived their source or inspiration from the wants
 
 CARL YLE'S FRENCH RE VOL UTLOJV. 1 5 3 
 
 and desires of the multitude, and set before us as the 
 transitory effects of individual action, those results in 
 which others acknowledge the necessary operation of a 
 providential law, often directly opposed to the purposes 
 and intentions of the actors. In short, in order to obtain 
 such general acceptance, the historian must abstain not 
 merely from tracing and developing, but even from admit- 
 ting the existence of a collective law of life governing the 
 human race, deny or overlook the unity of the divine idea 
 in course of gradual accomplishment on earth, and in fact 
 (whether consciously or not) take sides with Materialism, 
 by considering every fact as the offspring of accidental 
 circumstances or chance, and destitute of all connecting 
 links with the past or future of Humanity. 
 
 It is only when, by his adoption of this method, con- 
 tending parties are convinced that the historian seeks to 
 introduce no new elements into the contest by his narra- 
 tion of past facts, nor to present them as a presage of the 
 future, but simply as things which may be modified or can- 
 celled by individuals according to circumstances, that they 
 are willing to allow him a few lukewarm expressions of 
 favour even to their adversaries, and feel sufficiently secure 
 to surrender themselves with pleasure to the brief influence 
 exercised by his art. 
 
 By this method, however, the sacred mission of the his- 
 torian is at an end, and in its place we have but the 
 brilliant ephemeral vocation of the artist. I use the term 
 artist, not in the sense in which I understand it — as a 
 priest of the universal life and prophet of a high social aim 
 — but as the word is too generally understood at the present 
 day, to describe a being alike the offspring and parent of 
 transitory impressions, idolater of the form and image, 
 whose soulless and fugitive creations, evoked by the power
 
 i 5 4 MAZZINI. 
 
 of fantasy alone, are destitute of all serious intent or 
 purpose. 
 
 The writer who adopts this method is no longer — as 
 a true comprehension of the wants of the age requires him 
 to be — the depositary and conservator for future ages of 
 the law of which Humanity is the sole progressive inter- 
 preter ; he has even lost the right conceded to the historian 
 by the ancients, of sitting in judgment upon the facts he 
 relates, ne virtutes sileantur, utque pravis dixtis faclisque 
 ex posteritate et infamia metus sit. For in virtue of what 
 general criterium shall he point out good and evil, crime 
 and virtue, in a past wherein he had no part or share 1 By 
 renouncing the right of determining the status, worth, and 
 collective mission of a nation and of Humanity, he has 
 deprived himself of all law or rule of judgment save the 
 dictates of his own individual conscience. Lost amid a 
 multitude of different facts, and unable to calculate their 
 relative value and importance, which depend upon and are 
 derived from the series to which they belong ; oscillating 
 for ever between horror and admiration, discomfited by the 
 rapid absorption of the forms that excite this horror or 
 admiration into the same eternal night of nothingness, he 
 does but derive bitterness and disquietude from a spectacle 
 that should have brought its lesson of peace to his soul ; a 
 sense of impotence from that which should have inspired 
 him with faith — fatalism and scepticism instead of hope 
 and belief. According to his natural bias or temperament, 
 he -will be more strongly moved to sympathy with things 
 that rise or things that fall ; his pages will assume the like- 
 ness of the elegy or hymn ; he will accompany the car of 
 the conqueror with applause, or weep with those who follow 
 the victim to the tomb ; he will build a triumphal arch to 
 force, or raise an altar to pity.
 
 CARL YLE'S FRENCH RE VOL UTLON. 1 5 5 
 
 Thiers, in his History of the French Revolution, chose 
 the first course ; Carlyle the second ; nor could it be other- 
 wise. The first is dominated by egotism and appetite, 
 while the heart of the other is a temple of all the noble 
 and generous affections, revealed to us by everything he 
 writes. 
 
 But the reader? Is not the result of each method 
 equally defective as far as he is concerned ? Does he not 
 seek in history, and ought he not to derive from it, a lesson 
 as to the means of destroying the causes of suffering, rather 
 than a mere inducement to weep over it 1 Shall the life of 
 past generations bequeath us no better legacy than an emotion 
 of mournful pity 1 Is there no immortality on earth as 
 well as in heaven? Do not the past generations live again 
 in us through the lesson they have transmitted to us 
 beyond the tomb 1 And is it not the special mission of the 
 historian to penetrate and perpetuate this teaching ? Is he 
 not the executor of their last will, the angel of their 
 second life here below ? Is he not called upon to im- 
 mortalise it in that grand Pantheon of Humanity to which 
 each passing generation of mankind contributes a stone 1 
 
 The true historian — Janus of art — wanders anions; the 
 ruins of the past, with thoughts fixed on the future. His 
 works determine the links of continuity between that 
 which has been and that which is to be. His is a great and 
 holy mission ; can he accomplish it by merely teaching us 
 to mourn 1 
 
 Simply to set before us, incident by incident, fragment 
 by fragment, an external view of the series of facts, the 
 succession of crises through which extinct generations have 
 passed ; to drag poor, weak, individual man from time to 
 time into the midst of that ensemble ; to place him, as if 
 for the mere purpose of crushing and overwhelming hira,
 
 156 MAZZINL 
 
 face to face with the profound mysteries of time, the dark 
 ness without end, the enigma of existence ; — such are not the 
 means by which the historian can rightly fulfil the task he 
 has undertaken. There are in this world eniguiata which 
 man is doomed either to unravel or perish, and every 
 historian as highly gifted by genius as Carlyle is bound — 
 careless of praise or blame — to play the part of CEdipus. 
 If he does not attempt this, he tacitly confesses himself 
 inferior to his task, and renounces all influence upon the 
 companions of his pilgrimage here below. But by attempt- 
 ing this, even if unsuccessful, he will yet have served 
 Humanity ; for even in the errors of powerful minds there 
 is ever some fragment of the truth. 
 
 To embrace an entire subject in its complete spiritual 
 unity, from an elevated point of view, indicated by the 
 intellect and approved by conscience ; to study it in its 
 relation to universal tradition, in order to assign to it its 
 fitting rank therein, and mark its degree upon the scale of 
 social progress ; to derive from these the true character 
 and importance of every act, and estimate the morality of 
 the agent ; to reproduce material facts with exactitude and 
 impartiality, yet in such wise as to guide the reader to 
 their generating idea ; — such is the office of the historian. 
 But in order to fulfil this, a true conception of Humanity 
 is required, and this conception Carlyle lacks. 
 
 It is the capital defect of the book. 
 
 Carlyle does not recognise in a people — nor, a fortiori, in 
 Humanity — any collective life or collective aim. He 
 recognises only individuals. For him, therefore, there is 
 not, there eannot be, any providential law — in fact every 
 law contemplates mankind as a whole — nor any intelligible 
 chain of connection between cause and effect. He himself 
 declares this in the second chapter of the third book, vol. ii.,
 
 CARL YLES FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 1 5 7 
 
 and in the second chapter of the first book, vol. i., and 
 elsewhere. What criterium of truth he substitutes for this, 
 or whether indeed he substitutes any, I have been unable 
 to discover — there are only a few lines, which I shall have 
 occasion to quote, which give us any indication of his own 
 feeling or belief — and this want gives rise to an inexpres- 
 sible sense of obscurity, of something uncertain and 
 nebulous, I might almost say anarchical, in the work. We 
 rise from its perusal disturbed in mind, with a sense of 
 delusion and discouragement, a disposition towards scep- 
 ticism nearly approaching fatalism — for the one is but a 
 consequence of the other — and the What boots it ? of the 
 fatalist, is only another form of the What can we know 
 about it ? of the sceptic. 
 
 The spirit of the Walpurgis Nacht breathes throughout 
 these pages of Carlyle, inspired by an imagination full of 
 true poetry and power, constantly stirred and excited by 
 the perusal of the documents of the revolutionary period. 
 The writer — I should say the poet — fascinated, passive, 
 and absorbed by the various images that flitted in rapid 
 succession across his brain, has stamped them upon his 
 pages without judging or interpreting them, almost without 
 pausing to gaze upon or to examine them, and as if in 
 terror. The extinct heroes of his poem pass before our 
 eyes as before his own, in urt aria senza tempo tinta, a 
 phantasmagoric vision that well might shake the strongest 
 brain — a vision of gigantic spectres, sad or serene by turns, 
 but all bearing the impress of an inexorable fatality. What 
 task do they perform ? What mission do they fulfil 1 The 
 poet tells us not ; he does but mourn over each in turn, to 
 whatsoever race or order they belong. What did they 
 accomplish 1 What goal did they seek ? We know not. 
 Devoured by Time., they pass one after the other across tho
 
 i 5 3 MAZZINL 
 
 blood-stained plain, to vanish, lost in night — in the vast 
 night of Goethe, the nameless antl bottomless abyss. If 
 any seem to linger, the voice of the poet bids them " delay 
 not : onward, onward, to meet thy fate." 
 
 When all have vanished, you rouse yourself from the 
 whirling vortex, like one awaking from nightmare ; you 
 look around, as if for some vestige of these fleeting images, 
 seeking if they have left aught behind them to suggest 
 some explanation of enigma. You see naught but the 
 void : three words alone remain, as summary of the entire 
 history — Bastile, Constitution, Guillotine. 
 
 This mournful trilogy is the summing up of the narrative 
 of the greatest event of modern times ; and whilst it makes 
 known to us the intellectual secret of the writer, who has 
 only seized the material and external side of that event, 
 does it not also reveal the secret of his soul — unknown, it 
 may be, even to himself — and the penalty he has to pay for 
 not having searched deeper while yet able to do sol 
 Terror and discouragement. The Constitution — the aim of 
 every effort during that period — is placed between a prison 
 and a scaffold : three epigraphs, taken from Goethe, 
 accompany the three words he has chosen as titles for his 
 three volumes ; and the last concludes with a menace to 
 all those who believe in the possibility of constituting 
 themselves apostles of liberty. 
 
 A Bastile, a Constitution, and a Guillotine. 
 Is this indeed the whole significance of the French Revo- 
 lution 1 Does this gigantic event teach us no other lesson 1 
 Has the historian no better counsel for the youth of Europe 
 than the threatening Versuchs of Goethe? 
 
 No : it cannot be. Five-and-twenty millions of men do 
 not rise up as one man, nor rouse one half of Europe at 
 their call, for a mere word, an empty formula, a shadow.
 
 CARL YLE'S FRENCH RE VOL UTLON. 1 5 9 
 
 The lie volution, — that is to say, the tumult and fury of the 
 Revolution — perished ; the form perished, as all forms 
 perish when their task is accomplished, but the idea of the 
 Revolution survived. That idea, freed from every 
 temporary envelope or disguise, now reigns for ever, 
 a fixed star in the intellectual firmament ; it is numbered 
 among the conquests of Humanity. 
 
 Every great idea is immortal : the French Revolution 
 rekindled the sense of Right, of liberty, and of equality in 
 the human soul, never henceforth to be extinguished ; it 
 awakened France to the consciousness of the inviolability 
 of her national life; and awakened in every people a per- 
 ception of the powers of collective will, and a conviction 
 of ultimate victory, of which none can deprive them. It 
 summed up and concluded (in the political sphere) one 
 epoch of Humanity, and led us to the confines of the 
 next. 
 
 These are results which will not pass away : they defy 
 every protocol, constitutional theory, or veto of despotic 
 power. 
 
 Carlyle — if indeed he desired to help or serve us — ought 
 to have made himself the promulgator of this truth. He 
 did not do so ; he did not even attempt it. Whether 
 deceived by a false philosophic method, or led astray by the 
 absence of all such method, he has but given us a series of 
 pictures, admirably executed, but wanting a ruling idea, 
 lacking all connection and definite purpose. His book is 
 properly Illustrations to the French Revolution — illustra- 
 tions designed by the hand of a master, but by one from 
 whom we expected a greater and more fruitful work. 
 
 I am aware that this judgment of Carlyle is based upon 
 ideas which are apt to bring upon those who hold them the 
 name of dreamers, of believers in formulae and systems.
 
 160 MAZZ1NI. 
 
 Nor am I troubled by such epithets. They have ever been 
 bestowed upon the first supporters of new doctrines after- 
 wards received and accepted as truth ; and at the pi'esent 
 day they who apply them do so to conceal their own always 
 injurious, often culpable, indifference. But as I do not 
 wish to be misunderstood, I shall ask the reader to allow 
 me a few observations on this subject. I shall afterwards 
 return to Carlyle. 
 
 II. 
 
 In consequence of the habit, of which I spoke at the com- 
 mencement, of confounding two things essentially distinct 
 — impartiality and indifference — we have adopted a mode of 
 viewing the mission of history, which, were it generally to 
 obtain, would end by transforming the historian into a mere 
 chronicler of facts, having naught of Man left but two eyes 
 and a right hand. In order to satisfy this notion of his 
 duties, the historian, albeit assuming to record the life of 
 the past, must cease to be a thinker ; he must carefully 
 abstain from all belief — that is to say, from all criterium of 
 judgment between good and evil, between the useful and the 
 hurtful or useless. He must avoid all intelligent study of 
 the laws which generate the phenomena he observes, and 
 while still repeating the old phrases — History is enlightened 
 experience, the study of the Past is the school of the 
 Future, etc. — must profess not to comprehend the facts he 
 narrates. 
 
 The office of the historian, so understood, dwindles into 
 that of a collector of mummies, or guardian of inorganic, un- 
 classified bodies. But even that which is required from those 
 who occupy themselves with the study of inorganic bodies, 
 forbidden by this theory to those who have assumed the
 
 CARL VLB'S FRENCH RE VOL UTLON. 161 
 
 duty of preserving for us the tradition of Humanity. That 
 tradition is thus left a prey to anarchy and confusion, and 
 the historian, exiled from the moral world, sinks into the 
 mere annalist : true history is destroyed ; chronicles alone 
 remain. 
 
 Fortunately our writers generally rebel against this 
 narrow doctrine. The historian is, before all things, a man ; 
 gifted with nerves, muscles, blood, and the heart's life. 
 He does, in fact, both love, hate, and think ; and, whether 
 well or ill, he does write in accordance with these 
 sentiments. He is influenced by a theory of some kind, 
 even when he declares himself to have none : he may 
 proclaim himself emancipated from all systems, but he 
 does, in fact, only condemn the systems of others, while he 
 retains one of his own ; he would not be a man if he did 
 not. This is as true of Gibbon as it is of Botta ; of Hume 
 as of Michelet. I would undertake to declare the personal 
 feelings of any writer, after reading twenty pages of his 
 history. 
 
 How, indeed, is it possible for any writer to narrate any 
 fact without having previously determined its value and 
 importance in. his own mind 1 and how can he determine 
 these, unless he previously possess some theory of the 
 moral laws by which human action is regulated 1 A narra- 
 tion, you say, is a picture in words; neither more nor less. 
 Be it so ; but even the painter who paints your portrait 
 must place you in some attitude or costume, and will 
 endeavour to select the attitude or costume most charac- 
 teristic of the predominant disposition of your mind. And 
 the facts he is about to relate ought to present themselves 
 in a definite manner before the mind of the writer, whose 
 aim it should be to place himself in a definite point of view, 
 from which he feels he can most completely grasp their 
 
 34 6
 
 1 62 MAZZTN1. 
 
 true aspect. Tho historian must necessarily have some 
 theory of arrangement, perspective, and expression, from 
 which, logically, he will be guided to a theory of causes. The 
 cause of every fact is an essential part of that fact, and 
 determines its ruling characteristics. What is a fact, but the 
 effort of a cause seeking to create or influence the future 1 
 
 Is not the historian, to a certain extent, compelled to 
 proceed from the theory of causes to that of purposes or 
 aims ? Can any cause of action exist without generating 
 action 1 Does not all action necessarily suppose an aim to 
 be reached 1 Is not the attempt to reach this aim alike the 
 cause and the secret of the development of a fact ? How 
 then can a fact be rightly viewed and narrated otherwise 
 than from an eminence dominating alike the cause, the 
 fact, and the aim 1 
 
 The cause and the aim are the two extreme points or 
 limits between which the action of every historic work must 
 be comprised. They are the two elements, the right 
 determination of which constitutes the law. It is therefore 
 absolutely necessary that the historian should comprehend 
 the law governing the fact before he can present it to us 
 in its true light ; necessary that he should understand the 
 law of the generation of facts before he can arrange them 
 in their true order for the reader. 
 
 I do not mean to say that the historian is bound to 
 expound to us his philosophy of history, but I do mean that 
 he is bound to possess one for his own guidance, and that 
 every history should contain and exemplify the general 
 outlines of that philosophy, just as every number contains 
 its own root. 
 
 Every fact i3 the expression of a Thought. Even as no 
 true representation of Man can be given by the mere body 
 deprived of its vital spark, so no true representation of a
 
 CARL YLE'S FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 163 
 
 fact can be given by one who overlooks the thought which 
 was its life and soul. 
 
 Not all men agree to and accept these ideas when thus 
 expressed ; but in practice they are accepted by all. All 
 practically admit — whether confessedly or no — that no fact 
 can be well represented or understood when viewed in 
 isolation, and tliat the determination of its rank, and the 
 relation it bears in time and space to the facts by which it 
 was preceded and followed, are inseparable from its true 
 representation ; that the historian should view it from an 
 eminence dominating the whole chain of facts with which 
 it is connected ; that the law by which facts are governed 
 can alone explain them as a whole ; that the law of the 
 individual can only be determined from the species, and 
 that therefore the historian must of necessity have a 
 conception of laws governing the life of Humanity. 
 
 It is therefore of little import that some give these 
 truths the name of formulae, theories, or systems. 
 
 Our researches after a true conception of the laws 
 governing the collective life of Humanity have given rise 
 to two philosophical schools, around which are rallied the 
 infinite secondary varieties represented by individual 
 intellect. These two schools are at open warfare at the 
 present day, and the victory of the one or the other will 
 determine the direction to be taken by human activity in 
 the dawning epoch. 
 
 The first school, which has been characterised in our own 
 times as the Circular Movement School, is, in fact, most aptly 
 represented by the ancient symbol of the serpent biting his 
 own tail. For all those holding the doctrines of this school, 
 collective life, organised progress, and the unity of human 
 aim, are things having no existence. They only recognise 
 a genus humanum, a multitude of individuals, urged by
 
 1 64 MAZZINI. 
 
 wants and desires more or less uniform, to gather together 
 in groups, for the better satisfaction of those wants and 
 desires. "Whenever local circumstances and community of 
 language and customs induce in these nuclei a cohesion 
 more complete, a Nation is formed. Each of these nations 
 is under the influence of the law of ch'cular movement, 
 causing it to pass through various stages ; from monarchy 
 to aristocracy ; from aristocracy to democracy ; from 
 democracy to anarchy ; from anarchy to despotism, and 
 so on, for ever retracing the same circle. 
 
 This law of circular movement is not — in the opinion of 
 the majority of the school at least — the consequence of any 
 preordained design of God (their theory only recognises the 
 God of the individual), but results slowly and inevitably 
 from the development of human passions and tendencies in 
 reciprocal contact, and necessarily generating a series of 
 facts. The same human passions and tendencies determine 
 the greater or less duration of the various periods, as well 
 as the general character of the social facts constituting tho 
 life of each Nation. 
 
 Such, more or less openly avowed, is the formula of this 
 school. Its true source, in spite of every attempt to 
 ascribe to it a different origin, is Fatalism. Amid all the 
 vicissitudes of a world agitated by a thousand different 
 aims, impulses, and affections, and unsustained by tho 
 consciousness of a providential law to regulate individual 
 action, Man, according to the adepts of this school, is 
 abandoned almost without defence to the instincts of 
 appetite, of interest, of everything fatal on earth ; 
 the destined victim of circumstances fortuitous and 
 unforeseen, although invariably uniform in result. 
 
 Of what avail, then, his endeavours 1 Can he recognise 
 any lasting effect from his labour 1 No ; tho eternal flux
 
 CARLYLE'S FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 1 6 5 
 
 and reflux inexorably swallows up every idea, belief, 
 courage, or sacrifice. The Infinite assumes the form of 
 annihilation as far as man is concerned ; and naught is left 
 for him but the adoration of a fleeting happiness, the 
 enjoyment of the present in every possible form if he be an 
 egotist, or, if he be not such, the bitter inertia of impotence, 
 the materialism of despair. 
 
 To this alternative is the school logically reduced ; and 
 according to the good or evil dispositions of the individuals 
 of which it is composed, it is, in fact, divided into two 
 factions ; at times the servile flatterers of the powers of 
 the day, at times mourning over the destiny of the powers 
 of the past, its language is always full of sadness, as if its 
 every conceit or symbol were prophetic of death. One 
 might fancy its mission similar to that of the slave who 
 followed the car of the conqueror in the triumphs of the 
 ancients, to remind him : Thy triumph does but briny thee 
 one step nearer to thy fall. 
 
 The followers of this school regard every act of 
 enthusiasm with a sort of gloomy pity, and view with the 
 smile of scepticism every act of devotion to an idea. They 
 ai'e suspicious of all general propositions, and delight in 
 details and trifling incidents, as if seeking diversion or 
 amusement. They occupy themselves with analysis, as if 
 desirous of accustoming themselves to the idea of dis- 
 solution and of that nothingness which is in their eyes the 
 sum of all the noblest human works. The school boasts 
 many distinguished writers ; from Machiavelli down to the 
 end of the eighteenth century, all modern historians may 
 be numbered in its ranks. Ancient historians belonged to 
 this school, but forgetfulness of Collective Humanity was 
 not in them the result of an intellectual choice ; it was a 
 necessary result of ignorance.
 
 1 66 MAZZINL 
 
 The other school, of recent date, though anticipated Ly 
 the grand prevision of certain thinkers in the seventeenth, 
 sixteenth, and even twelfth centuries, is now known as the 
 School of Progressive Movement, though destined probably 
 to bear a different title at a future day. It dates its 
 origin from a new conception of Humanity, and a belief in 
 a providential law of progress and perfectibility, not 
 infinite, but indefinite, ruling over our human destiny. 
 It deduces that belief from the tendency to association 
 innate in man; from the unity of origin of the human 
 race ; from its ceaseless continuity and preservation ; from 
 the successive amplification and amelioration of social creeds; 
 from the identity of the human goal, and the necessity of 
 concentrating the whole sum of human forces to its achieve- 
 ment ; from the unity of God and of His nature, so far as 
 it has been vouchsafed to us to discover it; from the 
 necessity of a certain relation and resemblance between 
 the Creator and the created ; from the instinct and 
 necessity, which, as if it were a law of existence, urges 
 every living being to the fuller development of all the 
 germs, the faculties, the forces, the life within it ; from 
 tradition, which proves to us that the truths achieved by 
 one generation become the indestructible possession of tho^e 
 that succeed it ; from that aspiration, common to all of us, 
 which has laid the foundation of all forms of religion, and 
 made known to individuals the duty of self-sacrifice for aims 
 impossible of realisation within the limits of earthly existence. 
 All these synthetic ideas have been confirmed by the 
 study of the past, by the tradition of Humanity. The 
 followers of this school study all things with a view to 
 discover their mission, function, and scope in relation to 
 the collective human being. They view the various peoples 
 as workmen, so to .speak, in the great workshop of
 
 CARL YLF'S FRENCH RE VOL UTLON. 1 6 f 
 
 Humanity ; as instruments of labour, which, even though 
 they may decay or vanish when their task is done, yet 
 leave behind results fruitful to the entire species. This 
 theory affords a criterium of judgment by which to deter- 
 mine the character of all events in time and space, to place 
 the actions of individuals in a true and useful light, and to 
 dispense praise or blame according to motives. 
 
 The reproach of Fatalism which I have brought against 
 the opposite school has been brought against this, but 
 without just reason. Its accusers confound two things 
 completely distinct : the intention of the agent and the 
 results of the act. 
 
 The school regards individuality and human liberty as 
 sacred ; but the acts of the individual cannot alter the 
 providential law, nor long retard the progressive movement 
 of Humanity. The individual has the power of choice 
 between good and evil, and is personally liable to the con- 
 sequences of that choice ; but he cannot achieve the pro- 
 longed triumph of Evil in the world. God's law modifies the 
 results of human action, and turns to the profit of Humanity 
 even the crimes and errors of the wicked or mistaken. 
 
 From these different doctrines result different habits of 
 thought, method, and style in the two schools. The last keeps 
 record of evil without failing to recognise the good beyond • 
 it often laments, but never despairs ; nor, whatever be the 
 subject treated, do the works of this school instil scepticism 
 into the mind of the reader. It would be more likely to 
 err on the side of an exaggeration of faith. General ideas 
 are welcome to it, as is shown by its method of organisa- 
 tion and arrangement in the narration of facts, so as to 
 bring clearly into view their ruling and generating idea. 
 
 There are many honoured names among the followers of 
 tii*3 school ; it has continually increased in power and
 
 t68 MAZZINI. 
 
 influence since the beginning of the century, and at the 
 present clay nearly all the highest intellects of France and 
 Germany accept its teachings. 
 
 In other countries it has been charged with being tho 
 School of Hypothesis. If they who bring the charge were to 
 remember that all the greatest discoveries of the human in- 
 tellect in the various sciences have originated in hypotheses, 
 afterwards verified by study ; how this hypothesis of the life 
 and progress of Humanity may be traced up to Dante, and 
 illumines the page of Bacon, and how fruitful it already is 
 of life and movement among almost all the populations of 
 Europe at the present day ; they might, perhaps, be less 
 hasty in condemnation. The existence, and the constantly 
 increasing power and influence of the school, is, at any rate, 
 a general and important fact, worthy of deep and earnest 
 study ; the more so as the question involved is one 
 not merely intellectual, but moral in its direct bearing and 
 consequences. 
 
 If it be true — as I believe — that the sphere of duty is 
 enlarged in direct proportion to the intellectual capacity, it 
 is clear that the solution of the question will give rise to a 
 new definition of the sphere, activity, and direction of our 
 duties in the actual Epoch. 
 
 III. 
 
 To return, however, to Oarlyle. The results of the 
 doctrines of the two schools are unmistakably evident in 
 his present work. 
 
 Although the noble heart and powerful intellect of the 
 writer instinctively urge him upon a better path, I am 
 compelled, by the general tendency of the work, to class 
 him among the followers of the Circular Movement School.
 
 CARL YZE'S FRENCH RE VOL UTLON. 169 
 
 And there is one passage in his book (vol. i. lib. 4, chap. 4) 
 where, in speaking of the States General of France, he gives 
 us its explicit formula. 
 
 " It is the baptism-day of Democracy — the extreme 
 unction day of Federalism ! A superannuated system of 
 society, decrepit with toils (for has it not done much 1) 
 produced you, and what you have and know ; and with 
 thefts and brawls, named glorious victories, and with pro- 
 fligacies, sensualities, and on the whole with dotage and 
 senility, is now to die : and so, with death-throes and 
 birth-throes, a new one is to be born. What a work ! O 
 earth and heavens, what a work ! Battles and bloodshed, 
 September massacres, bridges of Lodi, retreats of Moscow, 
 Waterloos, Peterloos, ten-pound franchises, tar-barrels and 
 guillotines 1 and from this present date, if one might 
 prophesy, some two centuries of it still to light ! Two 
 centuries ; hardly less : before Democracy go through its 
 due, most baleful stages of Quackocracy ; and a pestilential 
 world be burnt up, and have begun to grow green and 
 young again ! " 
 
 Compare this passage with the other (lib. 2, chap. 3). 
 
 " So, in this world of ours . . . must innovation and 
 conservation wage their perpetual conflict as they may and 
 can. Wherein the ' daemonic element ' that lurks in all 
 human things may doubtless, some once in a thousand 
 years, get vent!" And with many others scattered through 
 the volumes. Compare it especially with the ironical tone 
 adopted by the writer whenever the word perfectibility, or 
 phrases belonging to the Progressive school, flow from his 
 pen ; and no doubt will remain to which of the two Carlyle 
 himself inclines. His book displays the same contempt for 
 every theory of causes ; the same habit of deriving great 
 events from fortuitous incidents ; the same compassion
 
 170 MAZZINT. 
 
 for every effort made to reduce the aoul's ideal into 
 practice. 
 
 And now observe the results. By rejecting or neglecting 
 the significance of his subject in its relation to the history 
 of the world, Carlyle has lost sight of the true significance 
 of each separate fact in its relation to his own subject. By 
 refusing or avoiding to determine the Humanitarian aim of 
 the French Revolution, he has lost the only rule or indica- 
 tion by which he might have been guided in the selection 
 of his facts. Rejecting all belief in a providential law by 
 which the individual is linked — through Humanity — to God, 
 he has lost sight of the true greatness of the human race ; 
 he stands between the individual and the Infinite without 
 hope or guide ; the immensity of the contrast drives him in 
 contemplation of the second to terror. This method leady 
 him to give all that importance to the external impressiov, 
 that he has withdrawn from the idea ; he allows himself to 
 become passive, and transmits to the reader the image or 
 reflection of each event, as it impressed his senses; no 
 more. 
 
 What were the causes of the Revolution 1 why did it 
 burst upon us and convulse the world ? why did it 
 assume so profoundly European a character 1 what was 
 the mission of the Constituent Assembly 1 how and to 
 what extent did it fulfil that mission 1 did the first inspira- 
 tion and initiative spring from the people to the Bourgeoisie, 
 or from the Bourgeoisie to the people ? were its earliest 
 efforts directed to the elevation of the democratic element 
 to power, or of a limited aristocracy ? were not the 
 tremendous crises of its later years the result of the choice 
 then made 1 and when the war burst forth — the war of all 
 the European powers leagued against a single people — 
 what were the causes that determined the triumph of
 
 CARL YLE'S FRENCH RE VOL UTLON. 1 7 t 
 
 France 1 through what nucleus or party, in the name of 
 what or whom, was the triumph achieved 1 what was the 
 mission of the Convention 1 what was the true significance 
 of the mortal struscsrle between the Girondins and the 
 Montagne? what gave rise to the reign of terror of 1793 1 
 could it have been prevented, and how 1 
 
 To none of these questions, which crowd upon the mind 
 of all who read and reflect upon the history of that period, 
 does Carlyle's work attempt an answer. Nor in asking 
 them do I demand a complete philosophy of history, but I 
 maintain that a history of that time should at least offer 
 the reader the elements of an answer to these questions. 
 Now the book neither gives you a summary of the reso- 
 lutions passed by the classes called upon to compose the 
 States General, nor of the legislative acts and institutions 
 founded by the various assemblies, nor any indication of 
 the meaning of the questions which divided the various 
 parties composing the Convention. And why indeed should 
 there be such 1 keeping in view the unfortunate system 
 which prevails over the writer's mind, why should he 
 ascribe more importance to sueli things as these than to a 
 hundred others which may or may not form a subject for 
 his history 1 In the name of what principle among those 
 he accepts shall we reproach him for these omissions? shall 
 it be in the name of the vitality that still endures in many 
 of those elements 1 Carlyle does not admit any continuity 
 of life ; he sees only a series of realities, each of which 
 is cancelled by or cancels the other in turn. In the name 
 of tbc lessons taught by the study of these events to future 
 generations? No: to him the science of Humanity, as 
 founded upon the tradition of ages, appears almost always 
 an illusion ; power belongs solely to irreflective spon- 
 taneity, to those whom he calls men of instinct and
 
 172 MAZZINL 
 
 intuition, and still more to accidental circumstances, and 
 whenever such circumstances happen to he reproduced the 
 same results will follow. 
 
 We have no right to be surprised, therefore, if the same 
 man who has given us such splendid, inimitable pages as 
 the descriptions of the 14th July, the 10th August, and 
 the nights of September, has given us naught beyond : it 
 was not in his power. How could he attribute any 
 importance to the study of causes ? has he not said (vol. ii., 
 book 3, chap. 6) that one other year of life for Mirabeau — 
 one other year, during which, having sold himself to the 
 court, he would no longer have directed, but sought to 
 repress the revolutionary movement — would have changed 
 the history of France and of the world? Does he not again 
 (book 4, chap. 4) say that if Louis XVI. had shown greater 
 firmness when his flight was discovered, and succeeded in 
 passing the frontier, the history of France would have been 
 diverted into a contrary channel 1 Yes : in his eyes such 
 things as the conquest of right and truth, the life of a 
 people, the destinies of a world, depend upon the few days' 
 longer life of a faithless man, or the momentary firmness 
 of a fugitive king. 
 
 Let us then destroy both books and pens, for if this be 
 so, this life and this earth are but the sport of chance. 
 Ah ! gladly do I turn aside to listen to the voice of old 
 Homer declaring to us, from his throne of two thousand 
 years' standing, that the gods permitted the ruin of Ilion and 
 the death of many heroes, in order that Poetry might hand 
 doton her lessons for the benefit of the ages to come. 
 
 It is sad — very sad in the case of a man of such 
 singular power as Carlyle — to see the consequences of the 
 absence of a fixed belief as to the law, mission, and destiny 
 of Humanity. Here is an earnest and virtuous man, one
 
 CARL VLB'S FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 173 
 
 who both understands and practises the duty of self- 
 sacrifice ; whose heart is open to every holy emotion or 
 noble affection, and who, nevertheless, is drawn on, without 
 either desiring or perceiving it, by a system which he 
 would repudiate were all its consequences laid bare before 
 him, to instil scepticism or despair into the hearts of his 
 readers. Here is a mind overflowing with poetry, rapid in 
 conception, master of the art of giving form and substance 
 to the infinite varieties and gradations of his thoughts, 
 reduced to mutilate the subject it has selected, to waste 
 those riches upon the insignificant symbol and outward form, 
 and to descend from the high sphere of eternal truth in 
 which its whole power might have been displayed, to that 
 of an imperfect and fugitive realism. 
 
 The unity of the event he describes is formed, so to 
 speak, of two parts, which may be called the body and the 
 soul. The soul has remained hidden from the eyes of the 
 writer, and consequently the mere body — great as is the 
 power exerted to galvanise it into motion — still presents 
 the aspects of a corpse. In that uprising of twenty-five 
 millions of men, in spite of the registers of the States 
 General — which, from the very outset, keep record of 
 Institutions, Rights, Education, and the triumph of ideas — 
 he sees nothing but the effects of famine, the utterances of 
 physical want. The fete of the Federation in 1790 is to him 
 only a theatrical manifestation ; the thunder of the cannon 
 which announced the unification of France to Europe — the 
 echo of which, three years after, repulsed the foreigner 
 from her frontier — is to him but meaningless and empty 
 noise. In a revolution which even yet causes the soil of 
 Europe to tremble beneath the footsteps of her masters, he 
 sees naught but the denial of a gigantic lie, a mere work of 
 destruction, a huge ruin. The positive side of the fact — .
 
 774 MAZZTNL 
 
 the fulfilment, in the political sphere, of that which 
 Christianity had fulfilled through the Reformation in the 
 moral sphere, the elevation of the human individual to 
 freedom, emancipation, and self-consciousness, in readi- 
 ness for the approaching transfusion of the actual into the 
 New Epoch, the first rays of which even now illumine 
 the horizon — remains sealed to him. Like Goethe, his 
 master, he has contemplated, not felt life. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I have frequently had occasion to name Goethe in the 
 course of these pages. In fact, the evil genius of Goethe 
 hovers over the trilogy of Carlyle, and many times as I read 
 I could fancy I saw the chilling glance and Mephistophe- 
 lian smile of the man whose thoughts and interests were 
 simply scientific even in the field of Argonne ; and upon 
 whose ear the sound of the cannonade that opened the 
 mighty war between Kings and Peoples struck merely — 
 Carlyle himself repeats this — as a noise, " curious enough, 
 as if it were compounded of the humming of tops, the 
 gurgling of water, and the whistle of birds." 
 
 To the influence of Goethe we may trace the tone of 
 irony used in describing the struggles of a nation which 
 was then combating for us all; as well as the satirical 
 jokes introduced into the narrative of grave events, 
 such as the night of the 4th August,* and in speaking 
 
 * " A memorable night, this 4th of August : dignitaries, temporal 
 and spiritual, peers, archbishops, parliament-presidents, each out- 
 doing the other in patriotic devotedness, and successively to throw 
 their (untenable) possessions on the altar of the fatherland. With 
 louder and louder vivals— for, indeed, it is after dinner too— they 
 abolish tithes, seignorial dues, gabelle," etc. (Chap. 2.)
 
 CARL YLE'S FRENCH RE VOL UTLON. 1 75 
 
 of the members of the Constituent Assembly.* To 
 the influence of Goethe we may ascribe the constant 
 disposition to crush the human being by contrasting 
 and comparing him with the Infinite, as if the true 
 greatness of man did not consist precisely in his conscious- 
 ness of the Infinite which surrounds him without impeding 
 his action ; as if the Eternity which is before and behind us 
 were not also within us ; as if from high above the earth 
 we tread a voice did not reach us from time to time, 
 bidding us : Omvard, in action, in faith, and in the con- 
 sciousness of thy dignity. God has confided to thee a 
 mission here below ; has promised to elevate thee step by step 
 toward IIim.\ 
 
 I do not fail to recognise the amount of good that must 
 infallibly spring from Carlyle's work, and if I do not 
 enlarge upon it here, it is simply owing to lack of space, and 
 the duty of thinking first of what may be useful to others 
 in my remarks, rather than of the pleasure I should myself 
 feel in holding up its beauties to admiration. None think 
 more highly of Carlyle's writings than I, and had I space to 
 enumerate his merits at length, I should find subject for 
 encomium in much that even his greatest admirers dis- 
 approve, and point out, as elements of new vitality and 
 vigour in the language, certain semi-Saxon, semi-German 
 
 * " In such manner labour the national deputies; perfecting their 
 theory of irregular verbs," etc. (Chap 2.) 
 
 t In speaking thus of Goethe, I am influenced by no spirit of 
 reaction, but by a profound conviction, that neither from the prin- 
 ciples nor sentiments of that great genius — perhaps the greatest of the 
 epoch now closed — can we derive inspiration to lead us in the epoch to 
 come. Goethe is like a magnificent tree growing on the confines of 
 two worlds, marvellous to behold, but fatal to all who rest beneath its 
 Bhadow. From Goetho we may find materials of deep and useful 
 Study, not of example.
 
 176 MAZZTNJ, 
 
 modes of expression peculiarly his own, containing the 
 germs of a renovation of style which will help to form that 
 of many writers to follow after him. But it appears to me 
 to be more useful now to point out the sad hut inevitable 
 results of a false system even in a mind of such power. 
 There is profit for us in the very errors of a writer like 
 Carlyle. 
 
 The times are grave. The mortal breath of scepticism 
 has chilled and withered too many youthful minds born for 
 better things, and sooner or later such writers as Carlyle 
 cannot but feel remorse for having added to this evil. In 
 the face of the crisis now threatening Europe, and the 
 grave events coming upon us, history — if unable to 
 assume any higher office — may at least be made a com- 
 mentary upon the noble words of Thraseas : Specla juvenis 
 . . . en ea tempora nalus es quibus firmare animum 
 expedit constantibus exemplis. 
 
 I have written these remarks with my thoughts full of 
 the times that are coming upon us. Carlyle will pardon 
 my frankness, and even in the few words of reproach I 
 have ventured to utter, see only a fresh proof of the hopes 
 which, in common with so many others, I cherish with 
 regard to him.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF 
 DANTE. 
 
 {First published in the "Foreign Quarterly Review.") 
 
 Within the last few years the study of Dante has received 
 a new impulse upon the Continent. In Germany there 
 have been at least four translations in succession, two in 
 terza rima, by Kannegiesser (1832), and by Streckfuss 
 (1834); two, in blank verse, by Prince John of Saxony, 
 and by Kopisch. La Vita ]\ r uova and Le Rime di Dantv 
 have also been translated. Philosophical' and elaborately- 
 learned commentaries upon the poem have appeared. 
 Lectures upon the Commedia have been given at Berlin, 
 Bonn, Konigsberg, Halle, Breslau, and other places. In 
 France, the translation of MM. Delecluze and Brizeux, and 
 many others; in Italy, the Life of Dante, by M. Balbo, the 
 writings (Catholic, alas !) of M. Fea, of M. Azzelini, of M. 
 Pianciani; — better still, the many editions of the poem and 
 the Ojtere Minori, so long neglected, all signalise the same 
 fact. After four or five centuries of accumulated labour 
 upon this man, one might fancy that he was born yesterday. 
 On all sides his life, his works, his system, his belief, are 
 industriously subjected to a new analysis. They are in- 
 terrogated like an oracle in seasons of emergency, with a 
 sort of feverish anxiety, which never has been, and perhaps 
 never will be, paralleled. It is a natural reaction against 
 
 347
 
 178 MAZZINI. 
 
 Bettinelli, and the indifference of tho eighteenth century, 
 says Labitte in the Revue des Deux Mondes* 
 
 Is it nothing more than this? This random style of 
 assertion with regard to the worship which humanity 
 renders to its great men is too frequent in the lievue. It 
 is an explanation I cannot accept, nor would it, I believe, 
 be welcome to those who are now devoting such earnest 
 study to the poet's works. 
 
 In all periods of transition men cast these longing glances 
 on the past, and, as it were, strain to their hearts with 
 redoubled affection the image of some one among their 
 mighty dead. Once it was Plato or Aristotle, now it is 
 Bacon or Dante. It is the last effort men make to seize 
 the guiding thread of Tradition, before adventuring upon 
 the unknown regions of the future. From these giants of 
 the realm of Thought, these high priests of the ideal, they 
 demand alike the meaning of that which has been, and a 
 prevision of that which is to be. 
 
 Nor do they appeal in vain. Great men are the land- 
 marks of Humanity ; they measure its course along the 
 past, and point out the path of the future, — alike historians 
 and prophets. God has endowed them with the faculty of 
 feeling more largely and intensely, and, as it were, of 
 absorbing more than their fellows of that universal life 
 which pervades and interpenetrates all things, and they 
 breathe it out again at every pore. The potent unity of 
 their own minds enables them to grasp the synthesis of 
 that which mediocrity is constrained to analyse and view 
 only in detail ; to organise their impressions, reminiscences, 
 and previsions into one harmonious and complete concep- 
 tion ; and from a rapid glance at effects, to seize and 
 comprehend their causes, their generating principle. The 
 
 * Eiographics ct Traducteurs dc Dante, Art. de M. Labitte, 1841.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 179 
 
 conscious thought of such men is the unconscious and still 
 inarticulate thought of a whole nation, which it will require 
 future nations to develop ; their speech an historical 
 formula, or an intuition of the future. They do not creato 
 — God alone creates — but they look forth and discern 
 stars, where our feebler vision recognises only the indistinct 
 brightness of the Milky Way. Their words are frequently 
 unintelligible to their contemporaries ; their Thought 
 appears at times to vanish, submerged beneath the waves 
 of the present ; but God watches its passage beneath the 
 abyss, until it again emerges in new splendour, fertile of 
 benefit to posterity. 
 
 We are just beginning to know this : in past epochs 
 we looked upon the history of literature as the history of 
 individuals alone — flowers uprooted from the soil that 
 nourished them — we considered genius as something mys- 
 terious and unintelligible, having no necessary connection 
 with the circumstances surrounding it, no raison d'etre ; — 
 prolem sine matre creatum — no definite mission or purpose 
 beneficial to succeeding generations. With astonishment 
 and distrust, men saw rise up amongst them one who was 
 not like themselves, but appeared to tower threateningly 
 above tliem ; and according to their own tendencies, as 
 they were good or evil, weak or strong, did they either bow 
 down before him in servile adoration, or hurl against him 
 the anathema and outrage of the barbarian. 
 
 In days nearer our own, mankind began to study genius ; 
 but without ceasing to regard it as a phenomenon isolated 
 and distinct from the medium, country, or epoch wherein 
 it made its appearance. Instead of endeavouring to grasp 
 the life of genius in its totality, they applied the anatomist'3 
 knife to the outward form, the corpse. Of what use to 
 them was the idea of the genius dead 1 whatever that idea
 
 180 MAZZINI. 
 
 might have been, was it not past 1 did it not die with him ? 
 When they had viewed his conception and pronounced it a 
 beautiful dream, all was said : accustomed to regard it as a 
 thing belonging to an entirely different sphere from their 
 own, they did not even imagine that the idea of genius 
 could ever be reduced to efficacious action through their 
 own labours. What they called criticism was, in fact, the 
 minute pedantic analysis to which they devoted the form or 
 envelope of that idea : an ungrateful, sterile, Sisyphean 
 task, which had to be begun anew every time a new 
 incarnation of genius, arising to prove that the laws of all 
 form must be sought in the idea or spirit, and that every 
 new idea has laws of its own, overturned the results of their 
 anterior labours. 
 
 Nevertheless we did advance, and while proceeding upon 
 our path of progress, and traversing ground which wo 
 believed had never been the scene of human labour, it came 
 to pass that we met with deeply-marked traces of travellers 
 who had been there before us, and recognised them as left 
 by those wonderful men whom we had, it is true, admired, 
 but whom we believed to have lived remote from our own 
 road, and regarded but as the apparitions of a day, which 
 had vanished from us the day after, on the path of the Infinite. 
 
 From that time our method of studying the works of 
 genius was changed ; true criticism arose. We now neither 
 blindly worship nor outrage genius ; we endeavour to 
 understand it, and we are learning to love it. We regard 
 the forms it assumes as secondary and perishable phe- 
 nomena ; the idea alone is sacred to us, for it alone has 
 received the baptism of immortal life; and we strive to 
 raise the veil by which the idea is covered. It is, in truth, 
 our own, even as its revealers are of us. The great in 
 genius are still our brothers, though blessed with the only
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 181 
 
 privilege we may recognise without self-degradation, for it 
 13 not the gift of men, but of God. We shall one day 
 rejoin them ; one day we shall realise in action the truth of 
 which they had been granted prevision in the soul's heaven, 
 and which we gradually comprehend in proportion to the 
 earnestness of our aspiration towards the future. 
 
 Great men, like the great scenes of Nature, must be 
 viewed from an eminence. Formerly, only the towering 
 summits of their greatness was visible to us, and, like the 
 highest peaks of the Alps when seen from immediately 
 below, their isolated grandeur was crushing and over- 
 whelming to our spirits ; but now, having ourselves reached 
 a height more nearly on a level with them, our vision 
 embraces the intermediate peaks, and comprehends the 
 unity of the chain. It endeavours to grasp it at least, and 
 even that is much. 
 
 The thought that burned within the soul of Dante is the 
 same that ferments in the bosom of our own epoch. Every 
 instinct within us points to this truth. It is for this that 
 we gather with new earnestness around his image, as if to 
 place our wavering belief beneath the protection of the vast 
 wings of his genius. 
 
 I do not say that the individual* belief of each of the 
 writers I have named is identical with that entertained by 
 Dante ; but I say that the general idea which gave rise to 
 their labours and towards the realisation of which they are 
 endeavouring to raise up a system of beliefs, is the idea to 
 which Dante consecrated the whole energies of his soul and 
 genius five centuries ago. 
 
 Whether Catholics, Guelphs, or Ghibellines, these bio- 
 graphers and commentators, though enchained by the 
 formula} of tho past, and incapable themselves of fore- 
 shadowing or comprehending the new faith which the times
 
 1 22 MAZZINI. 
 
 are maturing, nevertheless betray, by their labours and 
 aspirations, an instinct of coming renovation, a yearning 
 after a moral unity, founded upon some great, harmonious, 
 organic, authoritative idea; a sense of the deep need of 
 some comprehensive, religious, political, and artistic unity, 
 to strengthen and multiply those powers of intelligence and 
 will which are now frittered away in the pursuit of 
 material interest ; an undefined aspiration after the ideal 
 now hidden beneath the materialism of private aims, and 
 by the superficial, venal, and corrupt literature by which 
 we have been overrun during half a century. Dante is to 
 them what he is to us, one of the purest worshippers of the 
 ideal mankind has known, and one of the rarest intellects, 
 both for innate vigour and universality of conception, that 
 has existed for our good from the days of Charlemagne 
 down to Napoleon. It is for this that they write with 
 earnestness, and that we listen to them always with 
 patience, sometimes with affection. The secret of Dante is 
 the secret of our own epoch, and in it we are one with them. 
 
 Have these writers revealed this secret? Have they 
 grasped every aspect of that soul, so deeply loving, yet 
 severe, so open to every emotion,* yet so constantly sad ; 
 that soul which reflected within itself heaven, earth, and 
 hell, things finite and things infinite by turns % No : each of 
 them appears to have had but a fragmentary and incomplete 
 view of him. One has made him a Guelph; another a 
 Ghibelline ; nearly all of them have endeavoured to prove 
 him an orthodox Catholic. 
 
 Now Dante was neither a Catholic, a Guelph, nor a 
 Ghibelline ; he was a Christian and an Italian. 
 
 * Io che per mia natura 
 Trans in utabile sou per tuttc guise. 
 
 —Tar. 6.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 183 
 
 All of these writers Lave caught some outlines of! 
 his mind ; all have laboured upon some accessories of 
 the Parent Idea by which it was directed ; all have 
 studied, with more or less impartiality, the age in which 
 he lived, the men and things that lived and moved around 
 him, his Opere Minori hitherto neglected ; and by this 
 means they have opened up the only way through which 
 the individuality both of the Poet and the Man — so 
 long profaned and mutilated by the wretched sectarians of 
 the dead letter — can be rationally judged. 
 
 For fifty years Italian literati busied themselves in 
 writing dissertations on the Pape — tearing each other 
 to pieces about two different readings* — both equally 
 absurd — about the greater or less harmony in this or that 
 verse, while an ocean of harmony rolls its gigantic waves 
 throughout the whole poem. Now, however, Continental 
 Romanticism has condemned this race of syllabic-splitters to 
 silence, and may the dust lie lighter upon their tombs than 
 upon their volumes. 
 
 Our present writers occupy themselves less about the 
 shadow than the substance ; study the whole more than 
 the parts ; the idea, rather than the form in which it is 
 clothed. Instead of adding another commentary to the 
 thousand already existing, they endeavour to give us a life 
 of the Poet. Yet a few more such efforts, and this grand 
 
 * Upon the accuja, for instance, of the Florentine editions of 14S1, 
 and the attuja of other editions (Pur. c. 33, v. 48). Accuja and 
 attuja mean nothing, either in Italian or English, or any existing 
 language. They are evidently two errors of the copyists. Abbnja 
 (darkens) is undoubtedly tlio word Danto wrote, and yet not one of 
 the thousand and one annotators has substituted it for their bar- 
 barism. Foscolos edition (Kolandi, London 1842-3) alone gives the 
 true reading.
 
 1 84 MAZZINL 
 
 figure of the Christian era which hovered indistinctly above 
 our cradle, will be fully revealed to us, illumined with a 
 purer glory, to receive the tribute, not of our admiration 
 only — that Dante has compelled for five centuries — but of 
 our love, the love for which his soul thirsted — which none 
 gave during his lifetime, and which even yet, for want of 
 better knowledge, is but an instinctive love, and bestowed, 
 as it were, by halves. 
 
 Poor Dante ! he has been more injured by the admiration 
 of pedants than by the hatred of hi3 contemporaries, an 
 admiration which lost sight of the conception, to dwell on 
 the magnificence of its envelope, which worshipped the fire 
 but neglected the altar, which forgot the Thinker and 
 remembered only the Poet. Yet what is Poetry but the 
 faculty of symbolisation consecrated to the service of a 
 great idea 1 
 
 As in the case of Milton, the grandeur of the great poem 
 threw the minor works into the shade. The majesty of the 
 cupola has caused the lower part of the edifice to be for- 
 gotten. Lightly regarded by Dante's contemporaries,* they 
 did not meet with a more favourable reception even when 
 the press gave them a wider circulation. The age of 
 
 * Forgetting that Dante in his Convito, written during the last 
 years of his life, entirely confirms his Vita Nuova. " Se nella pre- 
 sente opera la quale e Convito nominato, piu virilmente si trattasse 
 che nella Vita Nuova, non intendo pero a quella inparte alcuna dero- 
 gare, ma maggiormente giovare per questa a quella." (If the present 
 work, which is denominated the Convito, treats of subjects of more 
 gravity, yet I do not intend to derogate in any wise from that, but 
 rather to render service to it by this.) 
 
 Boccaccio, in his Life of Dante, affirms that Dante blushed for his 
 first work, and others speak lightly of those detached pieces which 
 Dante in the great poem causes Casella, the friend of his youth, to 
 sin^' to him with so much sweetness and love. '
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 185 
 
 Patriots was extinct ; that of the Thinkers* not yet arisen. 
 High above the torrent of pedantic, Jesuitical, academic 
 literature which overflowed Italy, towered the Divina 
 Commedia ; traditionally admired — the omnipotent eternal 
 spirit of poetry within it overmastered every human 
 obstacle — but the minor works were nearly overwhelmed in 
 the flood. New editions of them were very rare ; and they 
 were, besides — owing to the custom of servilely following 
 one MS. copy without confronting it with others — so 
 disfigured by errors, that the Convito, for instance, re- 
 mained until the labours of Monti, and others, nearly 
 unintelligible. To this may be added the barbarous 
 Latinity of some, and the wearisome scholastic form of all. 
 Besides this, men, instead of studying such minor works 
 as are incontestably proved to belong to Dante, amused 
 themselves on the faith of some spurious codice, or of God 
 knows what, by attributing to him others, evidently forged, 
 and which are, nevertheless, quoted even in the present day 
 by his biographers. I am not speaking of the Disputaliones 
 de Aqua et Terra — of a Dissertation Upon the Nature 
 of Fishes — of the Life and Miracles of Saint Torello, 
 and other trash, attributed to him by Father Negri, 
 
 * The first edition of the Convito is that of 1490, by Buonacorsi, 
 Florence. A Titanic Italian conception, like that of Dante, could not 
 in these times be — I will not say felt, but even divined. Italian 
 civilisation, which, instead of spreading civilisation over the world, 
 remained concentrated, like the life-blood at its heart, Florence — 
 already felt the approach of adverse destiny to come. La Monarchia, 
 although twice translated by Jacopo del Rossa, and in 1467 by Mar- 
 silio Ficino, was first published at Basle by Gio. Opporino in 1559, 
 twenty-nine years after the last ray of Italian liberty had been extin- 
 guished by Charles V. and Clement VII. The book, De Vulgari 
 Eloquio, appeared at Vicenza in 1592 in a translated form ; the Latin 
 text in 1577 at Paris.
 
 1 86 MAZZINI. 
 
 Father Soldani, Valvassori, and such-like — they were 
 coon rejected as impostures — I am speaking of forgeries 
 which have obtained credit among literary men, which 
 have been received, one cannot conceive how, by the 
 writers named at the beginning of this article, and which 
 lead to -a false appreciation of the life and opinions of 
 Dante ; of the inventions of Mario Filelfo, an impudent 
 charlatan and speculator, if ever there was one ; I allude to 
 the Credo, to the Magnificat, to the Seven Penitential 
 Psalms, and other sacred poems, which are to be found in 
 almost all the editions of Dante's poems — to a host of 
 compositions, sonnets, and other things belonging to Dante 
 of Majano, his contemporary ; to another Dante, an obscure 
 poet of the fifteenth century ; perhaps to two of the sons of 
 Dante himself — any way, not to him — and yet inserted 
 among the Rime of one Dante* 
 
 If to all these sources of error wo add the audacious lies 
 introduced in the Life of Dante by Filelfo and others — the 
 anecdotes invented by Franco Sacchetti and other novelists, 
 and received as history — the accusations insinuated against 
 Dante by Popish and Jesuitical writers — the gratuitous 
 
 * Among the poems attributed to Dante by the Venetian editor of 
 1518, and by nearly all others after him, we must reject the canzone, 
 "Perche nel tempo rio," " Dacche ti piace, Amore, ch'io ritorni," 
 " L'uom che conosce e degno ch'aggia ardire," " L'alta speranza cho 
 mi reca amore," "Oime lasso quelle treccie bionde — Non spero cho 
 giammai per mia salute," " Io non pensava che lo cor giammai," 
 "Giovane donna deutro al cuor mi siede," "L'alta virtu che si 
 ritrasse al cielo." Of these several are by Cino. The sonnets, 
 "Dagli occhi belli di questa mia dama," "Un di si venne a noi 
 melancolia," "Messer Brunetto," etc., and "Quel che voi siete 
 amico, vostro manto," "Non conoscendo, amico, il vostro nome," 
 " Tu che stanzi lo colle ombroso o fresco," " Io ho tutto le cose ch'io 
 non voglio," " Lode di Dio, e della madre pura," " Quaudo veggio 
 Bechina corruccrata," madre di Virtute, luce eterna," and twenty
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 1S7 
 
 affirmations about his travels and his friendships by a 
 servile tribe of writers, working in the hire of somo 
 patrician families, whom they seek in all ways to flatter — 
 we shall easily understand why, after all these labours, the 
 life of Dante still remains to be written, and that his true 
 likeness can scarcely be discerned through the clouds and 
 darkness which centuries have accumulated over it. 
 
 A man well known here in England, and whose name, 
 synonymous with literary independence and incorruptible 
 political integrity, is revered by all the youth of Italy, 
 though little mentioned by her authors — Ugo Foscolo — did 
 much to dissipate these clouds of error. Stern and some- 
 what aggressive in temperament, his mind nourished and 
 fortified by severe study ; little calculated for laying new 
 foundations, but endowed with mighty faculties for destruc- 
 tion, he effectually overthrew (except for those who bow 
 down blindly before precedents) a whole edifice of errors 
 which barred the way to the study of Dante. In his 
 different writings, especially in his "Discorso sul Testo * " 
 etc., he cleared the ground for a better understanding of 
 
 more at least ought to be equally rejected ; also the four lines, 
 " L'amor clie mosse gia. l'eterno Padre," and the epigram, " tu che 
 sprezzi la nona figura." Among the hundred and fifty compositions 
 attributed to Dante, there are only about seventy that belong to him. 
 Dionisi did much to expunge the rest. M. Fraticelli, the editor and 
 illustrator of the best edition of the Opcre Minori, has done still more : 
 his criticism is almost always just and erudite. I regret, however, that 
 his edition, through some unaccountable timidity, retains all the poems, 
 whether genuine or not. Many persons will not read the notes which 
 form an isolated portion of the work, and will persist in the old errors. 
 
 * This "Discorso," published in 1S25 by Pickering, was to havo 
 formed the first volume of an edition of the Commcdia, which was 
 suspended by the death of Foscolo. This edition lias recently been 
 published by llolandi, 20 Beruers Street, who purchased the MSS. 
 from Pickering.
 
 1 88 MAZZINI. 
 
 the Commedia and the Poet. He confuted historical 
 anachronisms, affirmations taken up on the faith of an 
 academy or a savant — systems dictated by the vanity of a 
 town or a patrician palace. He submitted authority to the 
 test of rational examination ; he drove out the profane from 
 the vestibule of the temple, and there he stopped short. 
 He was too much tinged with the materialism or scepticism 
 of his time to constitute a priest of the god ; but it is 
 imperative on anyone who shall undertake to write the 
 life of Dante after him, deeply to study the labours of 
 Foscolo, and follow the rules of criticism he has laid down. 
 MM. Ozanam, Balbo, and D' Artaud still persist in the 
 old errors whenever it suits them to do so. M. Ozanam 
 sees Beatrice dying " dans tout 1' eclat de la virginit6," in 
 spite of the Bicifiliae suae, et uxori D. Simonis de Bardis, of 
 the paternal will. He declares that Dante understood Greek, 
 in the face of the testimony of Dante himself, when he speaks 
 in his Convito of the Translations of Aristotle, on the strength 
 of a sonnet, " Tu che stanzi lo colle ombroso e fresco," 
 which is evidently not by Dante, but which he attributes 
 to him on the authority of Pelli and his assistants, 
 without the smallest plausible argument in favour of its 
 assumed paternity. He consoles himself for the faults which 
 to him, as a Catholic, appear to disfigure the life of the poet, 
 by declaring that he showed signs of repentance by leaving 
 behind him a maguificent Hymn to the Virgin, and desiring 
 to be clothed upon his bier in the habit of the order of St. 
 Francis. Now, the sonnet " O Madre di Virtute, luce 
 eterna" to which M. Ozanam alludes, though attributed 
 to Dante by Corbinelli, belongs to Monte Andrea, or some 
 other obscure poet : and as to the religious habit in which 
 the Franciscan fathers are said by Taraboschi to have 
 muffled him, it is one of those stories which in the present
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 189 
 
 day any tolerably well-read man would be ashamed to quote. 
 Dante was married, and a father, and he has left it written 
 in his Convito that it is not the habit of St. Bennet, of 
 St. Augustine, St. Francis, or St. Dominic that constitutes 
 a religious life, and that God requires only the religion of 
 the heart.* In like manner, with M. Ozanam, M. Balbo 
 complacently gives the anecdote of the friar's habit; he 
 believes in the genuineness of le rime sacre, and in all the 
 prosaic ribald lines with which Quadrio, Rigoli, Crescim- 
 beni, Frotta, and others like them, have arbitrarily loaded 
 the memory of Dante. He professes clearly to discern the 
 stylo, the versification, and the reminiscences of the 
 poet. He swears by all the anecdotes which it has pleased 
 Franco Sacchetti and Oinzio Giraldi to introduce into their 
 tales. He believes in the four embassies, in the history of 
 the Guelphs and Ghibellines, in all that it has pleased 
 Mario Filelfo to set down to the account of Dante, forget- 
 ting that the quotations which this same Filelfo impudently 
 makes from prose works as by Dante, no one else can dis- 
 cover in them. But above all others in vigorous powers of 
 blind belief is M. le Chevalier Artaud de Montor, " mem- 
 bra de l'Acaddmie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, de 
 l'Academie de la Crusca, de l'Academie de Gottingue," and 
 of ten others, the names of whom he fondly cites here and 
 there in his notes. He recites, on the faith of Philelphus, 
 the beginning of a letter, " Bcatitudinis tuaj sanctitas nihil 
 potest cogitare pollutum, qua?, vices in tcrris gerens Christi, 
 totius est misericordise sedes, vera? pictatis exemplum,'' etc. ; 
 
 "Che non torna a religione pur quelli che a San Benedetto, a Sant' 
 Agostino a San Franceso, e a San Dominico, si fa d' abito di vita 
 .simile, ma eziandio a buona e vera religione, si puo tornare, in matri- 
 monio stando ; che Iddio non voile religioso di noi, se non il cuore.''— 
 Convito.
 
 19° MAZZINI. 
 
 written, he declares, by Dante, and to whom 1— to that 
 same Boniface VIII. against whom he inveighs bitterly 
 no less than nine times in the poem. In the warmth of 
 his zeal as a French Catholic and royalist, he is also tempted 
 to believe that not only Brunetto Latini, but Dante himself, 
 helped to draw up the bull for the canonisation of Louis 
 IX. by Boniface. He is astonished at the first sonnet by 
 Dante, " A ciascun alma presa e gentil core," composed, he 
 assures us, when he was nine years old,* although he might 
 have convinced himself, if he had read the Vita Nuova with 
 a little more attention, that Dante wrote it at eighteen. 
 He liberally attributes to Dante (p. 485) four lines, 
 " L'amor che mosse gicl Veterno Padre," written for a picture 
 in the great council-hall at Venice, painted by Guariento 
 forty-four years after Dante was dead. He quotes at ran- 
 dom, without discernment, or a shadow of critical skill, 
 alike from authors worthy of credit and imbecile compilers 
 — Philelphus and Tiraboschi, Muratori and Era Giacomo 
 da Serravalle — they are all one to him. 
 
 I have not for many years seen a book (635 pages !) so 
 utterly devoid of erudition, and so full of academical 
 bombast, of errors diffuse, confused, and involved. Yet 
 this book has been cried up in France as an important 
 and deeply-learned production, and it has, I believe, been 
 honoured by an Italian translation. 
 
 All this would have been no great matter in my eyes, if 
 these errors had only concerned mere unimportant matters 
 of fact, and did not tend to falsify our conception of the 
 Man ; of the inward life, the soul, and the faith of Dante. 
 He might appear more extraordinary, but not greater, if he 
 had composed a sonnet at nine years of age ; and he would 
 
 * The author of the Cariosities of Literature has fallen into the 
 same error, vol. vi.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE, iqt 
 
 have been none the less powerful as a Poet, even if in soma 
 weak moment he had written some of the wretched verse3 
 which ignorant compilers have attributed to him. But the 
 errors I have cited touch the nature of the man. In con- 
 sequence of the Guelphic prejudices of most of these 
 writers, the man is made to appear before us as incomplete, 
 inconsequent, weak, unstable, and irascible ; objective 
 rather than subjective ; yielding to circumstances instead 
 of dominating or creating them, and altogether devoid of 
 that potent unity which is the distinguishing sign of the 
 highest Genius, and especially of Dante. The adoration, 
 at times unreflecting, which these writers profess for the 
 Poet, contrasts strangely with a certain tone of ill-concealed 
 compassion and excuse for the errors of the man, which is an 
 outrage alike upon history and moral truth. They set 
 themselves to explain to us, in a tone of paternal indul- 
 gence, how Dante was first a Guelph and then a Ghibelline, 
 how he was urged in opposite directions by the influence of 
 eager and violent passions, by the fury of faction and the 
 weakness inseparable from human nature They quote 
 from Boccaccio, in whom the novelist at times predominates 
 over the historian, the anecdote of Dante's throwing stones 
 at some adversaries of Ghibellines. All of them, from the 
 writer in the Edinburgh Review * down to Cesaro Balbo, f 
 describe him as choleric, harsh, obstinate, and vain. 
 
 Such general assertions, with the false anecdotes 
 engrafted upon his life, representing him as changing both 
 his political opinions and conduct without sufficient reason, 
 
 * In every lino of the Divina Commcdia "we discern the asperity 
 produced by Pride struggling with Majesty." — Edinburgh Iieview, 
 No. 84. 
 
 t " Sifece per superbia edira Ghibelino, II gran peccato di Danto 
 fu l'ira."— Vol. ii., c. I.
 
 1 92 MAZZINI. 
 
 tend to destroy the unity of this powerful individuality, 
 which stands before us as the type of a whole nation, 
 solemn and grand as that nation's sorrows, and incline the 
 numerous class whose study of Dante has never gone 
 beyond the Inferno, to accept the accusation of sombre 
 ferocity and hatred which, during the last six years, has 
 been frequently cast by a writer, evidently of diseased 
 mind,* against a man whose soul was so full of life that 
 he placed morality above all science; who declared that 
 Philosophy and Beauty consist in the harmony of the 
 virtues ; who proclaimed that Genius itself is unable to 
 attain certain heights of knowledge unless it is assisted by 
 Love;f and who in the Convito defines philosophy as " uu 
 amoroso uso di sapienza" (a loving use of knowledge). 
 
 Thank God, all these accusations are false. In Dante we 
 may venerate Genius without fear or mistrust. The life of 
 Dante has yet to be written ; the writers of the present 
 day have only prepared the way for a biographer still to 
 come. 
 
 The bare facts of Dante's life, upon which I cannot 
 dwell here, need not occupy much of his future biographer's 
 time. Many facts, many dates, which have been the 
 subject of many pages of discussion, will, I fear, ever 
 remain uncertain ; and so, whatever Bevenuti d' Imola 
 may say, will remain the places where he first studied, his 
 masters — amongst whom we are only certain of Brunetto 
 Latini, — the friends whom he loved — if we except Guido 
 Cavalcanti, Giotto, Oasella, the musician ; Charles Martel, 
 king of Hungary ; Forese, brother to Oorso Donati ; his 
 sister, Piccarda, and perhaps one or two others, whom he 
 himself names in his poem. The dates and places of his 
 pilgrimages across Italy, from his exile in 1302 until his 
 * W. S. Laudor. t Par. vii.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE, 193 
 
 death in 1321, which erudite writers have contrived to 
 complicate still further by dint of random conjectures, can 
 with difficulty be established. 
 
 But the life, the true life of Dante, does not lie in the 
 series of the material facts of his existence. The life of 
 Dante consists in the sufferings and aspirations of his soul ; 
 in its dominant impulses ; in the ceaseless development of 
 the idea which was at once his guide, inspiration, and 
 consolation ; in his belie/ as a man and as an Italian. 
 
 Nor is this to be discovered by consulting the bio- 
 graphers and annotators of Dante ; nor by rummaging the 
 archives of monasteries, and tracing the precise footsteps of 
 his journeys throughout Italy with M. Ampere. It must 
 be done by penetrating as deeply and earnestly as possible 
 into the medium, the element in which Dante lived ; and 
 then by the study of his works, the minor works especially, 
 which were visibly designed by him as a preparation for 
 the Poem itself, the crown of the edifice. And in this last, 
 if read in a spirit of reverence, meditation, and love, tho 
 writer will find all he can require. 
 
 Both as a man and as & poet, Dante stands the first in 
 modern times ; or, more correctly speaking, the first of all 
 times (since there are none among the ancients who resemble 
 him) ; he is at the head of that series of great men which, 
 numbering in its ranks Michael Angelo, has been con- 
 cluded in our own day by Byron ; while another parallel 
 series, initiated (.ZEschylus excepted) by the Greeks, and 
 numbering in its ranks Shakespeare, was concluded by 
 Goethe. 
 
 The men of the mighty subjective race who form the first 
 category, stamp the impress of their own individuality — 
 like conquerors — both upon the actual world and upon the 
 world of their own creation, and derive the life they make 
 
 34S
 
 i 9 4 MAZZINI. 
 
 manifest in their works, either from the life within them- 
 selves, or from that life of the future which, prophet-like, 
 they foi'esee. 
 
 The great men of the second category reflect the images 
 of the external world like a tranquil lake, and, as it were, 
 cancel their own individuality to identify their soul succes- 
 sively with each of the objects that pass across the surface. 
 Each are equally powerful : the last more especially call 
 forth our admiration ; the first more especially awaken our 
 affection. In both series great struggles have to be endured, 
 and great victories are won ; but while the first, seared and 
 scarred with wounds, bear about them the deep and visible 
 traces of the combat, it is not so with the second. One 
 might almost fancy that the first were gods, who had 
 descended to strive and suffer with us ; and that the second 
 were men who had soared above us, to contemplate and 
 enjoy with the gods. 
 
 In all the works of Dante the life of stru^le and suffer- 
 ing he led is revealed to us, and we follow his steps with 
 beating hearts. He is one of the few of whom it may be 
 said, in the spirit of the beautiful Catholic legend, that they 
 leave their image upon their winding-sheet. 
 
 The accurate edition of Dante's Opere Minori which 
 Fraticelli has published is the best biography I know of 
 their author. The idea which Dante pursued during his 
 whole life finds its philosophical expression in the Convito ; 
 political, in the Monarchic/,; literary, in the treatise De 
 Vulgari Eloquio; political and religious, in the Commedia* 
 
 The Vita Nuova is a thing apart. Is is the perfume of 
 
 * To the study of these works must be added that of the seven 
 letters of Dante which remain to us. Two of these, that to the princes 
 and peoples of Italy, one to Guido da Polenta (dubious), were only 
 translated in the fifteenth century. The others— to Cino da Pistoia, to
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 195 
 
 Dante's early youth; the dreara of love which God giants 
 to His privileged children, to teach them never to despair 
 of life, nor to doubt or forget the immortality of the soul. 
 Written probably when he was eight-and-twenty, he relates 
 in it the story of his love for Beatrice, both in prose and 
 verse. It is an inimitable little book, full of thoughts 
 sweet, sad, pure, gentle, and delicate; loving as the note of 
 the dove, ethereal as the perfume of flowers ; the pen, 
 which in later years became as a sword in the hands of 
 Dante, here traces the image of Beatrice and of his own 
 love, as tenderly as the pencil of Raphaelle himself. There 
 are pages in the Vila Nuova in prose — those, for instance, in 
 which he relates the death of Beatrice— far superior to 
 Boccaccio in style and language ; and sonnets far beyond 
 the most admired of Petrarch. I know no one but Shelley 
 who could have translated them ; and at the present day I 
 think the task of translating the Vita Nuova could only be 
 confided to the heart and mind of a woman. 
 
 There have been loud disputes, from the days of Canon 
 Biscioni down to M. Rossetti, about the real existence of 
 such a person as Beatrice. How, from the mystic style of 
 the work and from some ambiguous expressions put there 
 as a prelude to the poem, learned men have been able to 
 bring themselves — in spite of the most positive evidence to 
 the contrary — to doubt the existence of " Bice," or to 
 
 the Emperor Hciiry VIII., to the Italian Cardinals, to the Florentine 
 friend, and to Can della Scala — are in Latin. Professor Charles Witte, 
 who was the first who gave an edition of them at Padua in 1827, 
 announced in 1838, in his German journal, the discovery of seven 
 other letters hy Dante, in a MS. given in 1622 by Maximilian of 
 Bavaria to Gregory XV. But tho manuscript was stolen from him, 
 and has remained from that time inaccessible. Other letters by 
 Dante, quoted by his old biographers, cannot now be found.
 
 1 9^ MAZZINI. 
 
 admit two distinct beings, the Beatrice of the poet and the 
 Beatrice of the theologian — thus destroying that progressive 
 continuity which is the peculiar characteristic of the genius 
 and the love of Dante — I cannot imagine. 
 
 It is precisely this endeavour to place a link between the 
 real and the ideal, between the symbol and the invisible, 
 between earth and heaven, which converts the love of 
 Dante into something which has no analogy among 
 mortals ; a work of purification and idealisation that stands 
 alone, to point out the mission of woman and of love here 
 below. She who inspired Dante on earth becomes his 
 guardian angel in heaven. In the face of the mighty love 
 kindled in the heart of the poet, death itself disappeared. 
 The bier, as Jean Paul says, is the cradle of heaven. Dry 
 your eyes, you •who weep ; the souls who have loved you, 
 and whom you have loved to the last moment of their 
 earthly existence, are appointed, in reward of their love and 
 yours, to watch over you, to protect you, to elevate you one 
 step nearer to God in the scale of your progressive trans- 
 formations. Have you never, in some solemn moment, 
 been visited by an intuition, a thought of genius, an 
 unwonted and brighter ray from the Eternal Truth 1 It 
 was, perhaps, the breath of the being whom you have 
 loved the most, and who has the most loved you on earth, 
 passing across your burning forehead. When, soul- 
 sickened by delusion and deception, you have shivered 
 beneath the icy touch of Doubt, have you never felt a 
 sudden glow of love and faith arise within your heart? It 
 was, perhaps, the kiss of the mother you wept as lost, while 
 she smiled at your error. 
 
 The love of Dante was as the prelude to these previsions 
 of our own day. It is not the pagan love, the joyous, 
 thoughtless, sensual love of Tibullus or Anacreon ; it ia
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 197 
 
 a, love full of sadness; tormented by the sense of and the 
 aspiration towards an ideal it is unablo to reach. At an 
 age when most men dream only of hope and pleasure, the 
 first love-dream of Dante tells of death; the death of 
 Beatrice. He never describes her beauty, unless it be her 
 fair hair, and the expression of her face : ove non puote, alexin 
 mirarla fiso* (" whence none can gaze upon her steadfastly ") 
 he hastens to add. Nor is it the love of the aire of 
 Chivalry. Chivalry— owing to the instinct of equality 
 innate in our people, which rendered them mistrustful of 
 the feudal origin of the institution — never struck firm root 
 in Italy. It cannot be likened to the love of Petrarch — a 
 love which often assumes a divine aspect from the charm of 
 its expression, but is querulous and restless, like all love 
 essentially earthly in its aim ; full of agitation during 
 Laura's life, and lamented or accepted as a sort of inevitable 
 misfortune at her death. f The love of Dante is calm, 
 resigned, and submissive : death does not convert it into a 
 remorse ; it sanctifies it. Far different from the love which 
 in our age of transition has deserved the name of Vegoisme 
 a deux personnes, a jealous and convulsive passion, half- 
 pride, half-thirst of enjoyment, which narrows the sphere of 
 our activity and causes us to forget our duties both towards 
 our Country and Humanity — the love of Dante does not 
 dry up the other affections ; it fosters and fertilises them 
 all ; strengthens the sense of duty and enlarges the heart 
 to embrace the whole earth. He says in the Vita 
 Kuova, " Whensoever she appeared before me, I had no 
 enemy left on earth ; the flame of charity kindled within 
 
 * The song, Io miro i b'wndi, etc., from which, if I recollect aright, 
 Mrs. Jameson draws her portrait of Beatrice in her Loves of the Poets, 
 is more than doubtful. 
 
 t Donne che avele, etc.
 
 198 MAZZINI. 
 
 me caused me to forgive all who Lad ever offended 
 me."* The power of further advance upon the path of 
 purity and improvement instilled into him by Beatrice is 
 the constant theme of his verses, f 
 
 Dante's love is love such as Schiller has conceived in his 
 Don Carlos ; such as the future will know. When 
 Beatrice — whose affection for the Poet may be inferred 
 from the reproaches she addresses to him in the 31st canto 
 of the Paradiso taken together with the canzone E m'in- 
 cresce di me, etc. J — was married, Dante fell seriously ill; 
 and when she died not long after, his life was in danger. 
 lie had, says Boccaccio, become a thing ivild and savage to 
 
 * " QuanJo ella appariva da parte alcuna nullo neinico mi rimanea, 
 anzi mi giungea una fiarnma di caritade la quale mi facea perdonare a 
 qnaluiKjue m'avesse offeso." 
 
 t " E qual soffrisse di starla e vedero 
 Divenia nobil cosa o si moria." 
 
 (While any who endures to gaze on her, 
 Must either be made noble or else die.) 
 
 — Eossctli's Translation. 
 
 . . . " Lc ha Dio per maggior grazia dato, 
 Che non puo mal finir che le ha parlato." 
 
 (All this virtue owns she, by God's will, 
 "Who speaks with her can never come to ill.) 
 
 — Bossetti's Translation. 
 
 X " Noi darem pace a voi diletto 
 Diceano agli occhi miei 
 Quei della bella donna 
 
 Alcuna volta. " 
 
 (We will bring peace, beloved, to thy heart, 
 The lovely lady's eyes at times 
 
 So spake to mine.) 
 
 ThG disproportion of their fortunes was perhaps the reason why 
 they were not married to each other.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 199 
 
 look upon. But he felt that the death of Beatrice had im- 
 posed new and solemn duties upon him ; that ho was bound 
 to strive to render himself more worthy of her. He resolved 
 to love her to the last day of his existence, and to bestow 
 upon her an immortality on earth,* and he kept the vow. 
 His union with Gemma Donati does not appear to have been, 
 as others have asserted, unhappy ;f but calm and cold, and 
 rather the accomplishment of a social duty than an irresistible 
 impulse of the heart. The brief weakness of his fancies for 
 Gentucca and Madonna Pietra passed like clouds over his 
 
 * " Apparve a me una mirabile visione, nella quale io vidi cose clie 
 mi fecero proporre di non dir piu di questa benedetta insino a tanto 
 ch'io non potessi piu degnaniente trattare di lei ; e di venire a cio 
 studio quanto posso siccome ella sa, veramente. Sicche se piacere 
 sara di colui, a cui tutte le cose vivono, che la mia vita per alquanti 
 anni persevera, spero di dire di lei quello chc mai non fu detto di 
 alcuna." — Vita Nuova. 
 
 (It was given to me to behold a very wonderful vision, wherein 
 I saw things which determined me that I would say nothing further 
 of this most blessed one, until such time as I could discourse moro 
 worthily concerning her. And to this end I labour all I can, as she 
 well knoweth. Wherefore if it be His pleasure through whom is the 
 life of all things that my life continue with me for a few years, it i3 
 my hope that I shall yet write concerning her what hath not before 
 been written of any woman. ) — Eossetti's Translation. 
 
 t The lines of the poem, which are often quoted, 
 
 " La fera moglie piu. che altro mi nuoce," 
 
 have nothing which shows the smallest allusion of Dante to his wife. 
 The other proof that is endeavoured to be deduced from his silence 
 goes for nothing. From a sentiment of delicacy, Dante never 
 mentions either his wife or children, whom he loved, and whom he 
 called round him as soon as circumstances permitted. Throughout 
 the whole poem there is but one reminiscence of his domestic 
 affections: it is the " Benedetta colei che in te s'iucinse," Inf. viii., 
 which recalls his mother.
 
 20o MAZZINI. 
 
 soul's horizon ; above them shone the serene heaven, 
 illuminated by the undying image of Beatrice, the sun of 
 his inward life. He gave her name to one of his daughters, 
 ■whom Boccaccio afterwards saw when a nun at Ravenna. 
 The memory of Beatrice was his inspiration, not only in 
 the magnificent pages which he consecrated towards the 
 close of his life in the great poem ; but in that worship of 
 Woman which pervades it from beginning to end. In his 
 love of every form of Beauty, in his incessant yearning 
 after inward purity, Beatrice was the muse of his intellect, 
 the angel of his soul, the consoling spirit sustaining him in 
 exile and in poverty, throughout the cheerless wanderings 
 of the most storm-beaten existence we know. 
 
 And another thought sustained him — the aim toward 
 which he directed all the energy Love had aroused 
 within him, and on this I specially insist, because, 
 strange to say, it is either neglected or misunder- 
 stood by all who busy themselves about Dante. 
 This aim is the National Aim — the same desire that 
 vibrates instinctively in the hearts of twenty-five millions 
 of men between the Alps and the sea ; and it is the secret 
 of the immense influence exercised by the name of Dante 
 over the Italians. This idea, and the almost superhuman 
 constancy with which he laboured towards its triumph, 
 render Dante the most perfect incarnation of the life of his 
 Nation ; and, nevertheless, it is precisely upon the Subject 
 of this idea that his biographers display the greatest 
 uncertainty. Thus Balbo, who in one page calls Dante the 
 most Italian of Italians, when in the next he endeavours to 
 prove it, hesitates, and loses himself in indecision ; then, 
 misled by his Guelphic tendencies, he writes (chap. v. 2) 
 that "Dante forsook the party of his ancestors, the party 
 of the people and of Italian independence, for that of
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 201 
 
 foreign domination," and he pleads for him, Heaven knows 
 what extenuating circumstances! M. Artaud bravely cuts 
 the human unity in twain, assumes that poetry and politics 
 must pursue different paths, and concludes with an Acad- 
 emic peroration — "J\ T on, Ilomlre de la pcninsule Ausonienne, 
 retourne a la Focsie, abjure la politique, science dans 
 laquelle tu te montrais variable, indecis, non par vilele, 
 mais par colere." 
 
 M. Lenormant goes so far (God forgive him, I cannot) 
 as to reproach him with the glorious letter in which he 
 refused tho amnesty which had been offered to him upon 
 dishonourable conditions.* 
 
 Others ignore the National faith of Dante as if it were a 
 thing inferior to his poetical conceptions. Such writers 
 would see no poetry in Moses ascending Mount Sinai amid 
 the storm, to bring down laws for his people. 
 
 This idea of his Nation's greatness illumines every 
 page of Dante ; it is tho ruling thought of his genius. 
 Never man loved his country with more exalted and 
 fervid love ; never man had more sublime and 
 
 * I give the letter entire although it is well known, for it seems to 
 me that at the present day, wherein our mortal disease is lack of 
 moral courage, it is well to repeat it to tho Italians: — "In Uteris 
 vestris et revereutia dehita et afl'ectione receptis, quam repatriatio mea 
 curse sit vobis ex animo grata mente ac diligenti animadiversione con- 
 cept : etenim tan to me di.strictius obligasti quanto rarius exules 
 invenire amicos contingit. Ad illarum vero significata respondeo, et 
 (si non catenus, qualiter forsan pusillanimitas appeteret aliquorum) 
 ut sub examine vestri consilii, ante judicium ventiletur, affectuose 
 deposco. Ecce igitur quod per litteras vestri meique nepotis, nee non 
 aliorum quam pluiium amicorum significatum est mihi per ordinamen- 
 tum nuper factum Florentiaj super absolutione bannitorum, quod si 
 solvere vellem certam pecuniaj quantitatem, vellemque pati notam 
 oblationis, et absolvi possum, et redire ad praesens. In quo quidem 
 duo ridenda et male praeconsiliata sunt, pater ; dico male prajcon&iliata
 
 202 MAZZ1NI. 
 
 glorious visions of the destinies in store for her. They 
 who see in him a Guelph or a Ghihelline do but grovel 
 round the base of the monument he sought to raise to 
 Italy. I cannot undertake to discuss here the question as 
 to the feasibility of Dante's ideas about Italy : the future 
 will decide that point. What I seek to show is the aim 
 he had in view, so as to afford materials upon which they 
 who hereafter write his life may form their judgment. 
 This I shall do as rapidly as possible, upon the authority 
 of the Convito and the treatise De Monarchia. 
 
 This, then, was the faith by which, in the thirteenth 
 century, the soul of Dante was sustained and upheld : 
 
 God is one. The universe is a thought of God;* the 
 
 per illos qui talia expresserunt, nam vestne littene, discretius et con- 
 Bultius clausullatae, nihil de talibus coutinebant. Estne ista revocatio 
 gloriosa, qua Dantes Allighierius revocatus ad patriam, per trilustriura 
 fere perpessus exiliuni ! Hsec me meruit inuocentia manifesta quibus- 
 libet ! Hsec sudor et labor continuatus in studio ? Absit a vero philo- 
 sophise domestico, temeraria terreni cordis humilitas, ut mor cujusdam 
 scioli et aliorum infamium, quasi vinctus, ipse se patiatur offcrri ! 
 Absit a viro prsedicante justitiam, ut, perpessus injmiam, in- 
 ferentibus, velut benenierentibus, pecuniain suam solvat ! Non 
 est hsec via redeundi ad patriam, pater mi ; sed si alia, per 
 vos, aut deinde per alios invenitur, quse famaa Dantis atque 
 honori non deroget, illam non lentis passibus acceptabo. Quod si 
 per nullam talem Florentia introitur, nunquam Florentiam introibo. 
 Quidni ? nonne solis astrorumque specula ubique conspiciam ? Nonne 
 dulcissimas veritates potero speculari ubique sub coelo, ni prins 
 inglorium, immo ignominiosum populo, Florentinoeque civitati me 
 reddam ? Quippe nee panis deficiet." ( Written in 1316 to a Florentine 
 friend. ) 
 
 * "Cum totum universum nihil aliud sit, quam vestigium quoddam 
 divinse bonitatis." — Monarchia, i. 
 
 " Ci6 che non more e ci6 che pu6 morire 
 Non e, se non splendor di quella idea 
 Che partorisce, amando, il nostro Sire." 
 
 — Farad, xiii. £52.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 203 
 
 universe therefore is one as He is one.* All things come 
 from God, and all participate, more or less, in the divine 
 nature, according to the end for which they were created. 
 They all navigate towards different ports upon the great 
 ocean of existence,! hut all are moved by the same will. 
 Flowers in the garden of God, they all merit our love 
 according to the degree of excellence he has bestowed upon 
 each. I Of these Man is the most eminent. Upon him God 
 has bestowed more of His own nature than upon any other 
 created thimr.S In the continuous scale of Being, that 
 man whose nature is the most degraded approaches the 
 animal ; he whose nature is the most noble approaches the 
 angel. || Everything that comes from the hand of God 
 
 * " . . . Le cose tuttc quante 
 
 Haiino online tra lore ; e questo e forma, 
 Che l'universo a Dio fa simigliante." 
 
 —Farad, i. 103. 
 t Convi/o, ii. 2. 
 
 " Onde si muovono a diversi porti 
 Ter lo gran mar dell' Esscre, e ciascuna 
 Con istinto a lei dato, clie la porti." 
 
 —Tar ad. i. 112. 
 
 X " Lo frondi, onde s'infrouda tutto 1' orto 
 Dell' Ortolano eterno, amo io cotanto 
 Quan to da lui a lor di bene e porto." 
 
 — Farad, xxvi. 64. 
 
 § "Onde l'aninia uraana, clie e forma nobilissima di queste clie sotto 
 il Cielo sono generate, piu riceve della natura divina, clie alcun altra." 
 — Conv. ii. 2. 
 
 || "E perocche nell' ordine intellettuale dell' univcrso si sale e dis 
 cende per gradi quasi continui dall' infima forma all' altissima, e dall' 
 altissima all' infima . . . etra l'angelica natura clie e cosa intellettuale 
 e l'anima umana non sia grado alcuno, ma sia quasi l'uno c l'altro 
 continuo . . . e tri l'anima umana, c l'anima piu perfetta delli 
 bruti animali ancora mezzo alcuno non sia : o siccome noi
 
 2o 4 MAZZINI. 
 
 tends towards the perfection of which it is susceptible ■* 
 and man more earnestly and more vigorously than all the 
 rest. There is this difference between Him and other 
 creatures, that His perfectibility is what Dante calls 
 " possible," which he uses for indefinite.^ Coming from 
 the bosom of God, the human soul incessantly aspires 
 towards Him, and endeavours by holiness and knowledge 
 to become reunited with its source. Now, the life of the 
 individual man is too short and too weak to enable him to 
 satisfy that yearning in this world ; but around him, before 
 him, stands the whole human race, to which he is allied by 
 his social nature, — that lives for ever, accumulating from 
 generation to generation its labours upon the road to 
 eternal truth. Humanity is one. J God has made nothing 
 in vain, and since there exists a collective Being, a 
 multitude of men, there exists one aim for them all — one 
 work to be accomplished by them all. § AVhatever this aim 
 
 veggiarao molti nomini tanto vili e di si bassa comlizione 
 che quasi non pare esser altro cbe bestia ; cosi 6 da porro 
 e da credere fermamente die sia alcuno tanto nobile o di si alta 
 condizione cbe quasi non sia altro che Angelo, altrimento non si 
 continuerebbe la umana spezie da ogni parte cbe esser non pu6." — 
 Cino. vii. 3. 
 
 * " Ciascuna cosa da providenzia di propria natura impinta e 
 incliuabile alia sua perfezione." — Convito, i. 2. 
 
 t " Nam etsi alue sunt essentise intellectum participantes, non 
 taraen intellectus earum est possibilis ut borninis." — Monarchia, i. 
 
 J Convito, iv. 15. 
 
 § " Deus et natura nil otiosum facit, sed quicquid prodit in esse, 
 est ad aliquam operationem .... Est ergo aliqua propria operatio 
 bumanae universitatis, ad quarn ipsa universitas hominum in tauta 
 multitudine ordinatur ad quam quidem operationem nee homo unus, 
 nee domus una, nee vicinia, nee una civitas, nee regnum particulare 
 pertingere potest. . . . Patet igitur, quod ultimum de potentia
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 205 
 
 may be, it certainly exists, and it is our duty to endeavour to 
 discover and attain it. Mankind, then, ought to work 
 together in unity and concord, in order that the intellectual 
 power bestowed upon them may receive the highest possible 
 development in the double sphere of thought or action.* 
 It is only by harmony, consequently by association, that 
 this is possible. Mankind must be one, even as God is 
 one : — one in organisation, as it is already one in its 
 principle. Unity is taught by the manifest design of Godf 
 in the external world, and by tho necessity of an aim. 
 Unity requires something by which it may be represented ; 
 hence the necessity of an unity of government. Therefor 
 it is indispensable that there be some centre to which 
 the collective inspiration of mankind may ascend, thence 
 
 ipsius, liumanitatis est potentia, sivo virtus intellectiva. Et quia 
 potentia ista per unum homineni, seu per aliquam particularium 
 comniunitatum superius distinctaruin, tota simul in actum reduci 
 non potest, necesse est multitudinem esse in humane- genero per 
 quam quidem tota potentia lirec actuetur." — Monarchic., i. 
 
 * "Proprium opus humani generis totaliter aecepti est actuare 
 emper totam potentiam intcllectus possibilis per prius ad speeulandum, 
 et secundario propter hoc ad operandum per suarn extensionem." — ■ 
 Monarchia, i. 
 
 t " Et cum coelum totum unica motu, scilicet primi mobilis, et 
 unico motore, qui Deus est, reguleter in omnibus suis partibus, 
 motibus, et motoribus . . . humanum genus tunc optime se habet, 
 quando ab unico principe tanquam ab unico motu, in suis motoribus, et 
 motibus regulatur. Propter quod necessarium apparet ad bene esso 
 mundi monarchiam esse, sivo unicum principatum, qui Imperium 
 appellatur." — Monarchia, i. 
 
 " Onino illud bene se habet et optime quod se habet secundem 
 intentionem primi agentis qui Deus est. . . . De intentione Dei est, 
 u omne creatum divinam similitudincm representet, in quantum, 
 propria natura recipere potest. . . . Sed genus humanum maxima 
 Deo assimilatur, quando maxime est unum, quando totum unitur in 
 uno." — Monarchia, i.
 
 2 o6 MAZZINI. 
 
 to descend again in the form of Law— a power strong in 
 unity, and in the counsel of the higher intellects naturally 
 destined to rule ; providing with calm wisdom for all the 
 different functions — the distinct employments which are to 
 be fulfilled ; itself performing the part of pilot, of supremo 
 chief, in order to achieve the highest possible degree of 
 perfection. Dante calls it " the universal Religion of 
 human nature :"* in other words, empire — Imperium. It 
 will be its duty to maintain concord amongst the rulers of 
 states, and this peace will diffuse itself from that high 
 centre into towns, and from the towns among each 
 cluster of habitations, into every household and the indi- 
 viduals of which it is composed.! 
 
 But where is the seat of this Empire to be 1 
 At this question Dante quits all analytic argument, and 
 takes up the language of synthetic and absolute affirmation, 
 like a man in whom the least expression of doubt excites 
 astonishment. He is no longer a 'philosopher, he is a 
 believer. 
 
 He points to Rome, the Holy City, as he calls her — the 
 city whose very stones he declares to be worthy of rever- 
 ence — " There is the seat of empire. There never was, and 
 there never will be a people endowed with such capacity to 
 acquire command, with more vigour to maintain it, and 
 more gentleness in its exercise, than the Italian nation, and 
 especially the Holy Roman people."! God chose Rome as 
 
 *".... A perfezione dell' universale religione ddla urn ana spezie, 
 conviene essere uno quasi nocchiero, che considerando le diverse 
 condizioni del mondo e li diversi e necessari affari ordinando abbia del 
 tutto universale e irrepugnabile ufficio di comandare." — Convito, ii. 4. 
 
 + C'onvito, id. 
 
 J " E perocche piu dolce natura signoreggiando e piu. forte iu 
 sostenendo e piu sottile in acquistando, ne fu no sia che quel popolo 
 santo nel quale l'alto sangue Troiano era mischiato, Iddio quello 
 elesse a quell' officio." — Convito ii. ; Monarchia ii., passim.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 207 
 
 the Interpreter of his design among the nations. Twice 
 has she given unity to the world ; she will bestow it a third 
 time and for ever. Think you that it was by physical 
 strength that Rome, a mere city, a handful of men, sub- 
 jected so many nations % Dante will tell you that there 
 was a moment when he himself believed that it had been 
 thus, and his soul was ready to revolt against the usurping 
 city. Afterwards his eyes were opened : in the pages of 
 the history of this people ho saw the working of Pro- 
 vidence unfold itself, " predcstinationem divinam." It 
 was decreed that the world should be prepared, by 
 equality of subjection to a single power, in order that the 
 teachings of Jesus might cause new life to spring up 
 throughout the whole earth. God consecrated Rome to 
 this mission — therein lay the secret of her strength. Rome 
 had no personal ambition ; she did not struggle with the 
 universe for her own welfare ; she accepted the mission for 
 the benefit of mankind. " Populus ille sanctus, pius, et 
 gloriosus, propria commoda neglexisse videtur, ut publica 
 pro salute humani generis procuraret." And when the 
 work was done, Rome rested from her labours, until the 
 second Gospel of Unity was needed by the world. It is in 
 the writings of Dante (for the quotations would be too 
 long) that we must look for the development of his thesis, 
 from the authority of the poets, whom he always interrogates 
 with reverence, to that of Jesus, who, he says, recognised 
 by his death the legitimacy of the jurisdiction that Rome 
 exercised over all the human race. The second book of 
 his Monarchia, and the fourth and fifth chapters of the 
 second treatise of the Convito, are, as it were, an entire 
 hymn to this idea, which Dante revered as religious. 
 
 The few and brief quotations I have given will suffice to 
 show that from the study of these works of Dante, the
 
 208 MAZZTNI. 
 
 Italians will find not only the consecration of the national 
 idea by the greatest Italian genius, but an unexpected 
 harvest of truths which have been claimed by writers long 
 posterior. In these pages, written five centui'ies ago, the 
 tradition of Italian philosophy is linked to the school of 
 Pythagoras, Pelesio, Campanella, and Giordano Bruno. 
 The holy doctrine of progress obtains the support of an 
 authority hitherto unsuspected, but anterior to every other 
 known. The collective life of the human race ; the law of 
 its incessant development and progressive advance, accom- 
 plished through the medium of perpetually-extending 
 association ; the prophetic announcement of a social unity 
 arising from the right distribution of the various social 
 functions with a view to one common aim, — the theory of 
 duty, all that forms the basis and the merit of a school 
 generally regarded as French, — we find laid down for us in 
 these books by an Italian of the thirteenth century, which 
 have hitherto been neglected, probably in consequence of 
 their uninviting style and form. 
 
 A moderating governing power, then, is necessary ; and 
 it is necessary that the seat of this power — the Empire — 
 should be Italy, Rome. Having arrived at this conclusion, 
 Dante naturally looked around for some means of realising 
 his conception. 
 
 Italy was divided between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. 
 These names, which in Germany only conveyed the idea of 
 a family feud, signified in Italy a thing of far more serious 
 import. In the eyes of the majority, the Guelphs were the 
 supporters of the Priesthood, the Ghibellines the supporters 
 of the Empire. But this was only the surface of things. 
 Ghibellinism, in fact, represented feudality, the Patricians ; 
 Guelphism represented the Commune, the 2^ople, and upheld 
 the Pope, because it was upheld by the Pope. The people
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 209 
 
 triumphed : the Commune was established on a foundation 
 of liberty and equality; the Patricians were almost every- 
 where put down. The feudal element was condemned to 
 impotence from that time forward. Military genius, or 
 wealth, might still render individual members of some of 
 the noble families influential ; it might even elevate them to 
 diminion in their own cities; but as a compact, collective 
 element, as a caste, the nobility were extinguished for ever. 
 The people, however, the conquerors, knew not how to 
 turn their victory to account. The time was not yet come 
 for the foundation of Italian Unity upon a popular prin- 
 ciple ; the day had not yet dawned for the gathering 
 together and fusion of the different races that had crossed 
 and mingled in our land. 
 
 The absence of any single moderating Principle — omni- 
 potent over local interests — gave rise to a species of anarchy 
 peculiar to Italy. Within the confines of the Peninsula, 
 twenty republics made fierce war upon each other, and 
 within the bosom of each of these, general ideas gave place 
 to private interests ; belief to passion ; questions of prin- 
 ciple to paltry human quarrels. The various factions 
 experienced in consequence a series of modifications, which 
 were further complicated by the intervention of the French, 
 called in by the Popes, whoso fatal policy it was to keep 
 one foreign power in check by means of another, without 
 ever appealing to the Italian element. When Urban IV. 
 summoned Charles of Anjou into Italy, the Patricians 
 (Ghibellines) were his enemies ; when, after the Bianchi 
 and Neri parties were formed, Boniface VIII. called in 
 Charles of Valois, the Bianchi, who were plebeians, were 
 persecuted ; and the Neri (the Patricians) became trans- 
 formed into Guelphs, because they sympathised with 
 Charles, the envoy of Boniface. The Bianchi then allied 
 
 349
 
 210 MAZZINI. 
 
 themselves with the Ghibellinos, whose ancient feudalism, 
 however, had been irrevocably crushed. 
 
 Dante, who in early life had been a Guelph, then 
 became a Ghibelline ; that is to say, he was always on the 
 side of the people, the element of Italian futurity. 
 
 But the people were at that time unable to constitute 
 the ideal Dante sought to realise ; as yet they only 
 represented a corporation, a fraction ; the Nation, 
 which Dante dreamed of, was as yet unknown. In 
 . looking, therefore, for a centre or link of Unity, Dante 
 found himself compelled to choose, not between Germans, 
 French, or Italians, but between the Germans and the 
 French only. 
 
 Italian Unity could not be the work of the Popes, for they, 
 who had made common cause with the people so long as the 
 struggle between the Priesthood and the Empire was 
 undecided, had now abandoned them. Between Finance 
 and Germany, therefore, it was impossible that the choice 
 could long remain dubious. Germany Avas distant from 
 Italy, torn by intestine divisions, and weakened by dis- 
 memberment, aborred by the Italians of old, and therefore 
 not likely to be long formidable to Italy. This was not 
 the case with France, already visibly advancing towards 
 Unity herself, and favourably viewed by the Italians. 
 Dante, who had also other reasons for not loving France, 
 addressed himself to Germany. 
 
 But howl 
 
 He intended to make Germany always subaltern, to 
 cancel her initiative, and subject her to the destinies of 
 Italy. All the northern races had thronged to Rome 
 between the fifth and seven centuries, to accept the 
 Christian faith, and receive, as it were, the word of their 
 mission there. And Dante intended that Germany should
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 211 
 
 thus a second lime receive it, in the person of her emperor. 
 What mattered it to him whether the man through whose 
 instrumentality Rome was to assume her providential 
 mission bore the name of Henry or any other 1 The point 
 of moment to him was, to make it manifest that such a 
 mission did exist ; that it existed in Rome, and belonged 
 then and for ever to the Roman people. The individual 
 who was for the time being to represent Rome was but a 
 shadow ; to be venerated for the day, and vanish the day 
 after. Rome once recognised as the seat of the double 
 Papacy — spiritual and temporal — and living symbol of the 
 Christian duality, the foreign emperor's successor would 
 probably be an Italian, aud even if he were not, the 
 inspiration of which he would be the echo would be 
 Italian. 
 
 There is not, in the whole treatise Be Monarchia, a 
 single word concerning Germany or the emperor. The 
 Roman nation is the hero of the book. Dante makes 
 careful provision to prevent the possibility that the 
 individual chosen should ever be able to substitute his own 
 for the Italian Idea. 
 
 " Humanum genus, potissimum liberum, optime se habit." 
 " Arise," writes Dante to his fellow-citizens, " like free 
 men ; and recollect that the emperor is only your first 
 minister." " Non enim genas propter gentem, sed rex 
 propter gentem."* When he speaks to Henry, it is as one 
 power addressing another. " Art thou," he asks him, " he 
 for whom we wait ; or must we seek another 1 Why dost 
 thou stop half-way, as if the Roman Empire were in 
 Ligurial" " llomanorum potestas" he exclaims to Henry, 
 "ytec metis Italia', nee triconis Europce margine coarctatur. 
 Nam, etsi vim passa in angustum gubernacula sua contraxii 
 * Epistola ai principi c popoli d'ltalia. — Monarchia i.
 
 212 MAZZINT. 
 
 undique, tamen de inviolabili jure Jluctus Anvphitrvres 
 altingens, vix ab inutili unda oceani se circumcingi 
 dignatur." Henry, I repeat, is to him nothing more than 
 the agent of the Roman Empire. 
 
 There is, I think, some difference between this doctrine 
 and Ghibellinism. Dante, in fact, in many passages of his 
 poem, in the Paradiso especially (c. vi. v. 103, and the 
 following lines), clearly separates himself from Ghibellinism. 
 Both factions sought to enlist him in their ranks, but in 
 vain (Par. xii. 69 ; Inf. xv. 70). He studied them on 
 every side ; he mixed in their ranks ; but it was as an 
 independent man, who felt it a duty to study the elements 
 and forces round him in order to adapt and apply them to 
 his lofty aim. 
 
 In 1302 exile and other circumstances drew him some- 
 what nearer to the Ghibellines ; but he openly quitted 
 them in the course of the same year, disapproving their 
 line of action. In his poem he treats both Guelphs and 
 Ghibellines as one who is partisan of neither. He is 
 almost cruel towards Bocca degli Abati (Inf. xxxii.), who 
 betrayed the Guelphs; and severely just towards Carlino 
 dei Pazzi, who betrayed the Ghibellines (idem). In the 
 course of his pilgrimage after his exile, he mingled, with 
 solemn and lofty mien, amongst all those whom he judged 
 capable of furthering his design, without distinction of 
 party. He died in the house of a Guelph. 
 
 Dante was neither Guelph nor Ghibelline. Like every 
 man bearing within him the sacred flame of genius, he 
 pursued an independent path, having a higher aim in view 
 than his fellows. He looked beyond Guelphism and Ghibel- 
 linism, to the National Unity of Italy; beyond Clement 
 V. and Henry VII. he saw the unity of the world, and the 
 moral government of that unity in the hands of Italy.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 213 
 
 This idea he never renounced. In his poem he 
 flagellates all the Italian cities, whether Guelph or Ghibel- 
 line, without regard or fear ; Italy alone is sacred to him ; 
 and if he reproves or reproaches her, you feel that his 
 reproaches are mingled with tears, aspiration, and a gigantic 
 pride of country. 
 
 In his small unfinished work, Be Vulgari Eloquio, he 
 attacks all the Italian dialects, but it is because he intends 
 to found a language common to all Italy ; to create a form 
 worthy of representing the National idea. He felt the 
 utmost indignation — he whom the savans tells us wrote 
 in French — against all Italians who preferred a foreign 
 tonirue to their own, and against those who wrote in favour 
 of the election of a foreign Pope. The Italian spirit was 
 sacred to him in whatever shape it was made manifest. 
 
 Dante, as I said some pages back, was a Christian and 
 an Italian. M. Ozanam, almost the only one who rejects 
 the absurd qualifications of Guelph or Ghibelline, goes 
 more widely astray than the others on the point of his 
 religion. The persecutions excited by Boniface VIIL, and 
 the fact of the Cardinal Legate del Poggetto being sent by 
 John XXII. to Ravenna, to procure the disinterment of 
 the ashes of Dante, that they might be exposed to public 
 execration, are a sufficient answer to tliose who in the 
 present day seek to prove him an orthodox Catholic. Nor 
 do I think the Popes, many of whom were venerated as 
 saints in their day, and whom Dante has placed in hell, 
 would greatly applaud the zeal of these writers. There are 
 schools of philosophy now existing in France which 
 prophesy that the Papacy will ere long become the apostle 
 of democracy, — en attendant, the Pope has excommunicated 
 them. I have not space fully to enter upon the question 
 of Daute's religion. Foscolo's discourse upon the poem
 
 214 MAZZINL 
 
 may be consulted with advantage ; but the study of the 
 Convito and the eleventh canto of the Paradiso will, I think, 
 be quite enough to put a stop for ever to this posthumous 
 ebullition of Catholicity. The Christianity of Dante was 
 derived directly from the first fathers of the Church, whose 
 enlarged views had already been departed from by the 
 Roman Papacy of the thirteenth century. His own ideas 
 of the progressive perfecting of the principle of human 
 nature in a future life, and of the participation of all men 
 in the spirit of God, open the way for the still further 
 development of Christian truth itself. To him the Papacy 
 was nothing more than a problem of spiritual organisation. 
 He was willing to submit to it on condition that it did not 
 shackle any of his favourite ideas. 
 
 The ideas of which I have here given a sketch are fer- 
 menting, more or less boldly developed, among the youth of 
 Italy. Understanding Dante better than the men who 
 write about him,* they revere him as the prophet of the 
 nation, and as the one who gave to Italy not only the 
 sceptre of modern poetry, but the initiative thought of a 
 new philosophy. But in the time of Dante, in the midst of 
 that whirlwind of personal and local passions which inter- 
 cepted all views of the future, who understood, who could 
 understand thoughts like those which he bore within his 
 soul 1 And what must have been the life he draped 
 through in the midst of elements so discordant from his 
 ideal, he who, in his native city, could find only two just 
 men — himself, perhaps, and his friend Guido — both mis- 
 understood (Inf. vi.-xiii.) — between an idea vast as the 
 
 # 
 
 M. Balbo, who, by the way, does not believe the Unity of Italy 
 possible, dismisses the book, Be Monarchia, with the sentence, " Un 
 tessuto di sogni" (a tissue of dreams). Cesare Canto, in his Marrjhcrita 
 pi Pusterla, calls it " abbietissimo libro " (a most abject book).
 
 ON 7 HE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 215 
 
 world, and that powerlessness to realise it which became 
 every day more and more apparent ! 
 
 His was indeed a tragical life — tragical from the real ills 
 that constantly assailed him — from the lonely thought 
 which ate into his soul, because there was none whom he 
 might inspire with it. At the age of twenty-four (1290) 
 he lost Beatrice, after having seen her in the arms of 
 another; at the age of thirty, towards the end of 1295, he 
 lost Charles Martel, to whom he was attached by a warm 
 friendship ; and Forese Donati, whom he loved still more 
 tenderly.* Five year's afterwards he was Priore, and 
 compelled by his duty as a citizen to bring upon himself 
 the hatred of the two parties who harassed Florence, 
 by banishing the chiefs of both ; and that of Boniface 
 VIII. and of all the friends of Charles de Valois, whose 
 mediation he caused to be refused. Guido Cavalcanti, 
 for sixteen years his best friend, died that same year; 
 and two years after this began for Dante the Hell 
 of Exile — that lingering, bitter, agonising death, f which 
 none can know but the exile himself, — that consump- 
 tion of the soul, which has only one hope to console 
 it. Accused on the strength of a forged document, 
 and whilst he was absent as ambassador to Boniface VIII., 
 of extorting money, he was sentenced to a fine, and to two 
 years' banishment. His house was given up to pillage, and 
 his lands devastated. Three months afterwards, enraged 
 that he had neither paid the fine nor sought to justify him- 
 self, his enemies condemned him to be burnt to death : ubique 
 comburatur sic quod moriatur. Then began his life of 
 
 * Tarad. viii. 55, and following lines ; Purg. xxiii. 76, etc. 
 
 t " Piget nie cunctis sed jiietatem niaximam illorum habco quicunque 
 in exilio tabescentes, patriam tantuin sumoriando rcvisunt." — De Vuhj. 
 EL ii. c. 6 ; Lion. Arel. VUa di Dank.
 
 216 MAZZ1NI. 
 
 wandering and disappointment; he went from province to 
 province, from city to city, from court to court, to see if 
 among the heads of parties, among warriors of renown, he 
 might find a man who could or would save Italy, hut in 
 vain. The desire and ambition might exist in some, but 
 the capacity in none. Everywhere he found narrowness of 
 intellect ; sometimes he was treated with contempt. Poverty 
 assailed him : urget me rei familiaris egestas* Ho 
 wore at times the semblance of a mendicant. Like a 
 ship without sail or rudder, he was driven through 
 every port, harbour, and shore, by the bleak and bitter 
 wind of grievous poverty, f He bore up against it all. 
 His adversity was great, but he was great as his adversity. 
 He who had loved so well was alone, without a single beloved 
 hand to soothe with its caress his brow, burning with the 
 fever of Genius ; he whose heart was so great, so gloriously 
 proud, in peril of his life, was reduced to beg, at the gates 
 of men whom perhaps he despised at the bottom of his soul, 
 for the "bitter bread. "J He who bore within himself the 
 soul of Italy was misunderstood by the whole nation ; but 
 he did not yield ; he wrestled nobly against the external 
 world, and ended by conquering it. If for some rare moment 
 he seemed to be borne down by the fury of the storm, it was 
 only to rise up again great as before — 
 
 * Ep. Kani Grandi de Scala. 
 
 t " Per lo parti quasi tuttc, alle quali questa liiigua si stende, pere- 
 grino, quasi rnendicando, sono andato, mostrando coutro a mia voglia 
 la piaga della fortuna, che suole ingiustamente al piagato molte volte 
 essere imputata. Verameute io souo stato legno senza vela, a senza 
 governo, portato a diversi porti e foci e liti dal vento secco che vapora 
 la dolorosa poverta ; e sono apparito agli ocelli a molti che forse per 
 alcuna fama iu altra forma m'aveano imaginato ; nel cospetto de'quali 
 lion solamente invilio, ma di minor pregio se fece ogni opera si gia 
 fatta come quella che fosse a fare." — Convito. X Che sa da sale.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 217 
 
 " Come la fronda die flette la cima 
 Nel transito del vento, e poi si leva 
 Per la propria virtu clie la sublima." 
 
 — Farad, xxvi. 85. 
 
 Taking refuge in his conscience : "sotto Fusbergo del sentirsi 
 puro" — graving by night his noble vengeance in the immortal 
 pages which he could only leavo to mankind as he descended 
 to the tomb,* he kept himself faithful to his God, to his 
 purpose, to himself. Nothing could bend or corrupt his 
 soul. It was like the diamond, which can only be conquered 
 by its own dust. 
 
 And if the pain had not been within, no adversity 
 springing from without could have disturbed this tetragonalf 
 being, who was born to suffer and to do. He was made to 
 govern, not to submit, endowed with an immense power of 
 will, and a patience beyond all proof — inilexible from con- 
 viction, and calmly resolute. Whenever I think on the 
 life of Dante, he reminds me, not of Luther himself, but 
 of his beautiful words — " Weil, weder sicher noch gerathcn 
 ist, etwas nider genissen zu thun, hier stehe ich ; ich kann 
 nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen." And Dante was 
 of those who recognise no law but that of conscience, and 
 recur for aid to none but God. His soul was naturally 
 loving, but, superior as he felt himself to all his contem- 
 poraries, it was the human species he loved — Man, as one 
 day he will be, — but with the men who surrounded him, 
 and whom, with a very few exceptions, he did not esteem, 
 
 * Farad, xxvii., 55 et seqq ; Furg. xi. 103, et seriq. 
 t . . . " Avvegna cbio mi seuta 
 
 Ben tetragono ai colpi di veutura." 
 
 — Farad, canto xvii. 
 
 ... "On all sides 
 
 Well squared to Fortune's blows." 
 
 — Carey.
 
 2i8 MAZZIN1. 
 
 he could have no intimate communion. When, in the 
 
 Fur cj. (xi. 61, et scqq.*), Oraberto dei Oonti di Santafiore 
 
 says to him — 
 
 " L'antico sangue e l'opere leggiadre 
 
 De' miei maggior mi fer si arroganto 
 Che non pensando alia comune madre, 
 Ogni nomo ebbi in dispetto tanto avante 
 Ch'io no morii — " 
 
 Dante hows down his head ; one would say that he felt 
 himself guilty of the same fault. He loved glory — he does 
 not conceal it; but it was not so much renown, which he 
 compares to the colour of the grass — which the sun first 
 colours green, and then withers + — as the glory of triumph 
 over the obstacles in the way of the aim — the sanction of 
 those who should call ancient the times in which he lived. 
 He desired to live in the future, in the second life, and that 
 his thoughts might descend like an inspiration into the 
 hearts of his successors here below. The grand thought of 
 a mutual responsibility, uniting in one bond the whole 
 human race, was ever and ever floating before his eyes. 
 The consciousness of a link between this world and the 
 next, between one period of life and the remainder, is 
 revealed every moment in the poem : a feeling of tender- 
 ness, engendered by this belief, gleams across the Purgatorio, 
 and penetrates even into the Inferno. The spirits there 
 anxiously ask for tidings of earth, and desire to send back 
 news of themselves.* He loved Florence : the place of his 
 
 * I am decidedly of the opinion put forth by Foscolo, that, with 
 the exception of some fragments, the poem was never published by 
 Dante. For proof of this see the Discorso sul testo. 
 
 t Purg. xi. 115. See also v. 100, et seqq. 
 
 J Inf. and Purg. passim. The beautiful sentiment expressed in the 
 lines, " A meie portai l'amor che qui raffina," which are spoken by 
 Currado Malespina, in the eighth chapter of Purgatorio, has been 
 almost universally misunderstood.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 2 t 9 
 
 birth — the temple, which ho calls "his beautiful St. 
 John,"* where he one clay broke a baptismal font to save 
 a child from drowning, are recollected with profound re- 
 gret : — he did not love the Florentines, and inscribed at the 
 head of his poem the words, omitted in all editions, 
 Foscolo's excepted — 
 
 "FliOKBNTINUS NATIONS, NON MOKIBUS." 
 
 A man of the middle ages, and endowed with all the 
 strong passions of that time, he knew what revenge meant. 
 When Geri del Bello, his relation, passed him without 
 looking, he says with sorrow — 
 
 "La violcnta morte 
 
 Che non gli e vendicata an cor, diss'io, 
 
 Per alcun clie dell'onta sia consorto 
 Fece lui disdegnopo ; odde sen gio 
 
 Senza parlarmi. " — Infer, xxix. 31 et se^q. 
 
 But he had too much greatness in his soul, and too much 
 pride, it may be, to make revenge a personal matter ; he 
 had nothing but contempt for his own enemies, and never 
 — except in the case of Boniface VIII., whom it was 
 necessary to punish in the name of religion and of Italy — 
 did he place a single one of them in the Inferno, not even 
 his judge, Conte Gabrielli. The " non ragioniarn di lor ma 
 guarda e passa," which in the beginning of his poem he 
 applies to those who have been worthy neither of heaven 
 nor hell, appears to have been his own rule towards his 
 enemies. Strong in love and strong in hatred, it is never 
 love of himself nor hatred of others. Life was not sweet or 
 dear enough to him for him to attach much importance to 
 anything personal; but he loved justice and hated wrong. 
 He was able to look Death in the face without that 
 * " II mio bul san Giovanni."
 
 220 MAZZIN1. 
 
 egotistical fear, mingled with egotistical hope, which 
 appears in every turn of Petrarch's poems, and in his 
 letters, and also in the writings of Boccaccio. It ap- 
 peared to him of more importance to hasten to accom- 
 plish his mission upon earth, than to meditate upon the 
 inevitable hour which marks for all men the beginning 
 of a new task. And if at times he speaks of weari- 
 ness of life,* it is only because he sees evil more 
 and more triumphant in the places where his mission 
 was appointed. He concerned himself not about the length 
 or the shortness or life, but about the end for which life 
 was given ; for he felt God in life, and knew the creative 
 virtue there is in action. He wrote as he would have 
 acted, and the pen in his hand became, as we have said, 
 like a sword ; nor is it without a purpose that he places a 
 sword in the hand of Homer, the sovereign poet.f He 
 wrestled, when it was against nothing else, with himself — 
 against the wanderings of his understanding! — against the 
 over-weening fire of poesy§ that consumed him — against the 
 violence of his passions. The purification of heart by which 
 he passed from the hell of struggle to the heaven of victory, 
 to the calmness of one who has made the sacrifice of hope 
 from his earthly life — in violenta e desiderata face — is 
 admirably shown in the poem. With a character such as 
 we have sketched — haughty, disdainful, untamable, as the 
 opinion of his contemporaries, even through imaginary 
 anecdotes, tells us — looking upon himself as belonging to 
 the small number of privileged beings endowed with high 
 understanding, and worthy of the communion of the Holy 
 Spirit — impatient of the rule of others, and disposed to 
 infringe it|| — Dante was evidently one of those men who 
 
 * Purg. xx. 10-14. + Inf. iv. 86, et seqq. 
 
 % Inf. xxvi. 21. § Purg. II Ep. (led. ad Kanem.
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 221 
 
 pass unscathed and erect through the gravest and most 
 perilous conjunctures, nor ever bow the knee save to the 
 power that works within. That power he adored with a 
 trembling and religious fervour — Dens fortior ; — he had 
 gone through every stage of the growth of an Idea, from 
 the moment when it arises for the first time in the soul's 
 horizon, down to that when it incarnates itself in the man, 
 takes possession of all his faculties, and cries to him, "Thou 
 art mine." 
 
 It was the dust of the diamond — the hidden, mysterious 
 pain of Genius, so real, and yet, from its very nature, 
 understood by so few — the torment of having seized and 
 conceived the ideal, and felt the impossibility of reducing 
 it to action in this life — the Titanic dream of an Italy, the 
 leader of humanity, and angel of light among the nations — ■ 
 contrasted with the reality of an Italy divided against 
 herself, deprived of her temporal head, and betrayed by 
 her spiritual ruler — coveted by all strangers, and ready to 
 prostitute herself to them — the sense of the power within 
 to guide men towards good, while condemned, from adverse 
 circumstances and the sway of egotistical passions, to 
 waste that power in enforced impotence — the constant 
 inward struggle between faith and doubt ; — all these were 
 the things that changed the author of the Vita Nuova into 
 the writer of the Inferno — the young angel of peace and 
 gentle poetry, whose features Giotto has preserved to us, 
 into the Dante with whom we are familiar, the Dante 
 come back from hell. It was when bowed down beneath 
 this internal conflict that Dante, one day, wandering across 
 the mountains of Lunigiana, knocked at the gate of the 
 monastery of Santa Croce del Corvo. The monk who 
 opened it read at a single glance all the long history of 
 misery on the pale thin face of the stranger. " What do
 
 222 MAZZINI. 
 
 you seek hcreV' said ho. Dan to gazed around, with 
 one of those looks in which the soul speaks, and slowly 
 replied — " Peace " — Pacem.* There is in this scene some- 
 thing that leads our thoughts up to the eternal type of all 
 martyrs of genius and love, praying to His Father, to tho 
 Father of all, upon the Mount of Olives, for peace of soul, 
 and strength for the sacrifice. 
 
 Peace — neither monk nor any other creature could 
 bestow it on Dante. It was only the unseen hand, which 
 sends the last arrow, that could, as Jean Paul says, take 
 from his head the Crown of Thorns, f 
 
 I have endeavoured in the foregoing pages to show Dante 
 in a point of view hitherto too much neglected, and which 
 is, nevertheless, I think, the most important. I have, at 
 tho same time, given an answer to the astonishment of M. 
 Labitte, and of all the Labittes of the day, at the newly- 
 kindled enthusiasm with which this generation studies the 
 old Allighieri. Besides that which all men of heart and 
 intellect at all times look from the genius of the poet — tho 
 Ideal made manifest — his soul — the soul of his epoch — 
 Italy seeks there for the secret of her nationality. Europe 
 seeks there the secret of Italy, and a prophecy of modern 
 Thought. 
 
 Dante has found peace and glory ; the crown of thorns 
 has long since fallen from his head ; the idea which he cast 
 like seed into the world has sprung up, and developed from 
 century to century, from day to day ; his soul which did 
 
 * Letter from Fra Flavio to Uguccione della Faggiola v. Troia del 
 Veltro Allegorico. 
 
 + " Aber das Grab ist nicht tief ; es ist der leuchtende Fustritt 
 eines Engels, des uus sucht. Wenn die unbekannte Hand den 
 letzten Pfeil an das Haupt des Menschen sendet, so btickt er vorlier 
 das Haupt, und der Pfeil hebt bloss die Dornenkrone von semen 
 Wunden ab."
 
 ON THE MINOR WORKS OF DANTE. 223 
 
 not find a responsive echo in its course here below, com- 
 munes in the present day with millions in his native 
 land. More than five hundred years have passed over the 
 country of Dante since the death of his mortal part — years 
 of glory and of shame, of genius and intolerable mediocrity, 
 of turbulent liberty and mortal servitude; but the name 
 of Dante has remained, and the severe image of the poet 
 still rules the destinies of Italian generations, now an 
 encouragement and now a reproach. The splendour of no 
 other genius has been able to eclipse or dim the grandeur 
 of Dante ; never has there been a darkness so profound 
 that it could conceal this star of promise from Italian eyes ; 
 neither the profanations of tyrants and Jesuits, nor the 
 violations of foreign invaders, have been able to efface 
 it. " Sanctum Poetoe nomen quod nunquam barbaries 
 violavit." The poem was long misunderstood and degraded 
 by vulgar commentators ; the prose works, in which 
 Dante had written the National Idea still more ex- 
 plicitly, were forgotten — concealed by suspicious tyranny, 
 from the knowledge of his fellow-citizens ; and yet, as 
 if there had been a compact, an interchange of secret life 
 between the nation and its poet, even the common people 
 who cannot read know and revere his sacred name. At 
 Porciano, some leagues from the source of the Arno, the 
 peasants show a tower in which they say Dante was 
 imprisoned. At Gubbio a street bears his name ; a house 
 is pointed out as having been dwelt in by him. The moun- 
 taineers of Talmino, near Udine, tell the travellers that 
 there is the grotto where Dante wrote — there the stone 
 upon which he used to sit ; yet a little while, and the 
 country will inscribe on the base of his statue : — 
 
 The Italian Nation to the Memory of its Prophet.
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 
 
 Preface. 
 (Writ ten in London, 1850.^ 
 
 The writings here reprinted bear upon the Religious 
 Question : they contain the profound convictions of one 
 who has ever believed and said that all the great questions 
 which agitate the world resolve themselves into a religious 
 question. Those who reflect how in all times of moral and 
 intellectual crisis, the men who consult their inmost con- 
 science, and, without regard to the powers and prejudices 
 of the day, say aloud what they believe in their hearts, have 
 always been calumniated, will not now be arrested by the 
 abuse of a few journalists, — the old echo of a dying past, — ■ 
 who accuse the National Italian party of being unbelievers, 
 atheists, and abettors of disorder for the love of disorder. 
 They will read and judge for themselves. They will see, 
 from the pages here reproduced, dating from 1832, that we 
 have not waited for favourable circumstances, for the 
 sympathy which the imprudence of our enemies has excited 
 in our behalf, to express our thoughts, or to attack that 
 which we thought it our duty to attack. They will see also 
 that we have not kept back one iota of our religious faith 
 from those who are enlisted under the same political 
 banner — that we have never sacrificed our conscience to 
 the immediate aim of our efforts, or to the desire of 
 increasing our ranks. They will comprehend that if our
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUXCIL. 225 
 
 opinions be erroneous, they are at least earnest ; and they 
 will feel the necessity, the duty, of judging them seriously. 
 In the silence to which Italy is condemned — a silence 
 which she can only break by revolutions — these opinions 
 have a collective importance ; they are not only the barren 
 thought of an individual ; they are the echo of the thought 
 which is now subterraneously fermenting in the Italian 
 masses, and they have received their first consecration in 
 Rome and in Venice. 
 
 When Young Italy raised her banner, now nearly twenty 
 years ago, two elements predominated in Italy : superstition 
 and materialism. Superstition was the habit of a part of 
 the population, to whom all light, all education, was 
 forbidden, led astray by a traditional religious sentiment 
 conceived in the narrowest spirit, — of men who, deprived 
 of every motive of action, of all consciousness of the true 
 life of citizens, clung with a kind of despair to a heaven 
 little understood. Materialism was the natural reaction of 
 those who had been able to emancipate themselves from 
 the abject spectacle which religion offered, from the brutal 
 yoke it sought to impose upon their intelligence. It was 
 said to them, Believe all that we affirm : they replied by 
 denying all. Luther compared the human mind to a 
 drunken peasant upon horseback, who, leaning over on one 
 side, falls on the other, when you seek to set him upright. 
 Many peoples have passed through a similar experience. 
 Young Italy rejected at once both materialism and super- 
 stition. It declared that in order to acquire the strength 
 necessary to become a nation, -Italy must emancipate 
 herself not only from the old Catholic belief, but from the 
 materialism of the eighteenth century. The first pretended 
 a divine sanction to immobility ; the second dried up the 
 sources of faith, and logically tended to destroy the idea of 
 
 35o
 
 226 MAZZINI. 
 
 duty, and to leave nothing for the object of human worship, 
 but right and enjoyment. We wished to progress as the 
 world progresses, according to the will of God, through the 
 Life eternal. We did not wish to combat in order to 
 obtain the satisfaction of certain appetites, panem et 
 circenses, but for something more elevated ; for the dignity, 
 the sacred liberty of the human soul, its development in 
 love. We sought to fulfil a mission upon earth for our own 
 and for our brethren's good. 
 
 It is not my purpose to give here an exposition of the 
 complete doctrines of Young Italy ; but I hold it important 
 to prove, that our language to-day is the same as that of 
 twenty years ago. We have never deviated from it. Now 
 as then, my predominating idea, and the vital thought of all 
 my labours, is this : a fatal separation has been established 
 between religious and political belief, between heaven and 
 earth ; this is why we wander groping from one crisis to 
 another, from convulsive movement to convulsive move- 
 ment, without succeeding, without finding peace. It is 
 necessary to reunite earth to heaven, politics to the eternal 
 principles which should direct them ; nothing great or 
 durable can be done without this. God, Religion ; the 
 People, Liberty in Love ; these two words, which as 
 individuals we inscribed on our banner in 1831, and which 
 afterwards — significant phenomenon — became the formula 
 of all the decrees of Venice and^of Rome, sum up all for 
 which we have combated, all for which we will combat unto 
 victory. The people of Italy instinctively comprehended 
 this idea. Young Italy became rapidly powerful. A 
 gradual transformation was effected in a portion of its 
 enlightened youth ; which became, I will not say the most 
 devoted, but the most constant in devotion, to their country. 
 Two or three years of struggle and suffering suffice to
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 227 
 
 exhaust the strength when the inspiring sentiment is only 
 one of reaction, of indignation against oppression : a whole 
 life is not too much for the realisation of an idea which 
 seeks to reunite earth to heaven. 
 
 The party which in Italy has assumed the title of 
 Moderate, came across our path. Imbued with a badly, 
 disguised materialism, springing up in the shadow of courts 
 which have no other faith than that of power at any price, 
 this party has no belief, it has only opinions. Adopting 
 and abandoning them with the same ease, it accommodates 
 itself to everything in turn ; princes, republics, concessions, 
 popular insurrections, truth and falsehood. It creates 
 nothing; it cannot create anything; it seeks force, material 
 force, and worships it wherever it is found, and whatever 
 name it may bear. It has called itself opportunist. At the 
 present time it is warring against the priests in Piedmont, 
 in the service of royalty; it would do the same thing 
 to-morrow against the princes, in the name of the Pope, 
 should the Pope recommence a career of concessions. In 
 reality, the Moderates believe neither in the princes, nor in 
 the Pope, nor in the people ; they believe in their own 
 coterie, in their small conceptions, in their personal 
 influence. They have neither a grand idea nor a great 
 sentiment. They consequently follow, and do not initiate. 
 When Charles Albert, whom they despised, manifested a 
 weak ambition which appeared to them capable of serving 
 their designs, they proclaimed him the first man of Italy. 
 When Pius IX., in whom as Pope they do not believe, put 
 on a semblance of liberalism, they wrote volumes to prove 
 that Papacy was to regenerate the whole world. And now, 
 even since the affairs of Rome, they do not dream of saying 
 to the Pope : You are a falsehood — descend; they venture 
 only to combat his temporal authority, and, at the same
 
 228 MAZZINI. 
 
 time, hypocritically prostrate themselves before the spiritual 
 authority of the father of believers. What can Italy or the 
 world hope from such men, and from such a policy ? 
 
 This policy has come to us from Machiavelli. But with 
 Machiavelli it was not theory, but history. He lived in a 
 period of ruin and dissolution ; liberty had perished every- 
 where ; the last spark was being extinguished in Florence ; 
 the Pope and the Emperor having at last coalesced, after a 
 struggle which had endured for ages, had vowed to spread 
 darkness over all Italy. Corruption had descended from 
 the Courts to the middle ranks of society. Cramped by 
 the iron hand of the foreigner, the national genius was 
 gradually disappearing, and the efforts of the giant Michael 
 Angelo and of his great contemporaries, appeared only 
 likely to result in immobilising it in stone or on canvas, 
 raising to it a magnificent monument, which might serve it 
 for a tomb. Military valour was no longer the buckler 
 of a free state. The chiefs of bands, without country, 
 without faith, sold their courage, talents, and soldiers to 
 the highest bidder. Poor Machiavelli, after having 
 endeavoured to struggle, after having, in his own person, 
 protested in prison and under torture, seated himself in 
 sorrow upon this great ruin, and described, after the 
 manner of an epitaph, the causes which had occasioned it. 
 Using the scalpel of the anatomist upon the corpse, he 
 made of his books a long report of his work of dissection. 
 And now, these men would inscribe the device of death 
 upon the cradle of a new life. After more than three 
 centuries of that latent renovating transformation, which 
 men call death or sleep, Italy is breaking the stone of her 
 tomb, stirring in all her limbs, making of her winding-sheet 
 a banner of insurrection ; and instead of bending the knee 
 before this awakening nation, instead of crying to it, In t/ie
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 229 
 
 name of God and the people, gird thyself for a supreme effort, 
 and arise, they come coldly and pedantically to read to it a 
 chapter of Machiavelli. Oh ! had it at least been that one 
 in which he says to his country, " Thou wilt never again 
 have life, except by unity ; and thou wilt never have unity, 
 except by abolishing the Papacy P 
 
 But they dare not. They would steal, unperceived, some 
 fragments of liberty, without teaching the people to com- 
 prehend them, or the reason of their right to them ; they 
 wage a petty war, which will have a speedy end, against the 
 priests, without daring to go to the source of the corruption 
 of the priests ; without daring to say aloud : Liberty is the 
 right and the duty of the human soul; he who pretends 
 to enslave the conscience, must desire to enchain the body. 
 Strange, that this is the party which in England, in this 
 ancient land of liberty and of good sense, finds favour ; 
 whilst the popular party, the logical party, the openly and 
 honestly emancipatory party, is coldly received. A few 
 vain good wishes, and a number of injurious suspicions, 
 behold all the part that England has as yet taken in a 
 question which is pregnant with the liberty of the world — 
 the Italian question. The cause — I declare it frankly, and 
 at once — is that the religious sentiment is expiring in 
 England, and that, whilst the form remains intact, the 
 foundation is being undermined and corrupted. The unity 
 of the religious principle of the Reformation has dis- 
 appeared. The divorce, of which I spoke above, between 
 earth and heaven has been accomplished in England as 
 elsewhere ; and it is because this separation has taken 
 place, that Catholicism temporarily gains ground upon 
 Protestantism. 
 
 Let me explain my thought. 
 
 A mighty question is now being agitated in Europe
 
 230 MAZZINL 
 
 between two principles which have divided the world since 
 its creation ; and these two principles are liberty and 
 authority.* The human mind desires to progress according 
 to its own light, not by favour of concession, but by virtue 
 of the law of its own life. Authority says to it : — Rest 
 where thou art : I alone strike the hour of the march; when 
 I am silent everything should rest, for all progress which is 
 accomplished without me and beyond me, is impious. The 
 human mind interrogates itself : it feels its own right and 
 power ; it finds that the germ of progress is in itself, that 
 strength and right come to it from God, and not from an 
 intermediate power coming between itself and God, as if 
 charged to lead it. Hence springs revolt and resistance, 
 and hence the anomalous situation of Europe. The con- 
 science of the human race is struggling with tradition, 
 which desires to enchain it ; the future and the past dispute 
 for the collective life of humanity, and for that of the 
 individual. The man who in these struggles, ever stifled 
 yet ever reappearing, — in this series of manifestations and 
 violent repressions which have constituted European history 
 for two-thirds of a century, — sees only the action of some 
 turbulent factions, or the result of some accidental or 
 material causes, such as a deficit, a famine, a secret con- 
 spiracy or cabinet intrigue, understands nothing of the facts 
 of history, nothing of the laws, of which, through those 
 facts, history becomes the expression. And he who in the 
 great questions of the suffrage, or proletarian emancipation, 
 and of nationality, sees nothing but the subjects of political 
 discussion, having no connection with the religious idea, 
 
 * It will be seen that the word authority is here used in a narrower 
 sense than is usual with Mazzini. He simply means the existing reli- 
 gious authority, which he has always declared to be but the phantom of 
 
 authority.
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 2*1 
 
 ■j ■ 
 
 with the providential development of humanity, understands 
 neither man nor God, and degrades to the proportions of 
 a pigmy intellectual contest, that which is, in fact, a battle 
 of giants, of which the stake is a step in advance in the 
 universal education of mankind, or a step backward towards 
 the world which we had believed to have ended with the 
 middle ages. 
 
 Between the two great armies which sustain the combat, 
 marauders and free corps have undoubtedly introduced 
 themselves and falsified its character ; between the two 
 doctrines represented in the two camps, a multitude of 
 exaggerations, of dangerous Utopias, of false and immoral 
 philosophies, have come to throw trouble and alarm in men's 
 minds. 
 
 It matters little. The real question remains as I have 
 stated it. All these irregular Cossack-like movements will 
 disappear, like the sharp-shooters of an army, when the 
 hour arrives for the masses to begin to move. It matters 
 little also for what I now desire to say, whether the result 
 of the struggle ought to be, as some imagine, the absolute 
 abolition of the principle of authority and the pure and 
 simple enthronement of liberty; or whether, as I believe, 
 the future holds in reserve a great collective religious mani- 
 festation, in which the two terms, authority and liberty, 
 tradition and individual conscience, will both be recognised 
 as essential elements to the normal development of life, and 
 united in one whole, become at once the safeguard of belief 
 and of progress. What is certain is that transformation 
 implies death, and that the new authority can never be 
 founded until after the complete overthrow of that which 
 now exists. 
 
 The destruction of authority, such as it now exists ; the 
 proclamation of human liberty, whether as a means or as
 
 232 MAZZINI. 
 
 the end, — this is the problem which Europe has now to 
 solve. Right or wrong, the human mind believes that it 
 sees a glimpse of new destinies, of a new heaven ; and in 
 order to prepare itself to realise them, it claims its indepen- 
 dence ; it desires to interrogate humanity upon what it 
 believes, upon what it expects and hopes ; it desires to pass 
 under revision the laws of life, of its being ; — old authority 
 would forbid the attempt. 
 
 The question is a vital one ; and one would have 
 thought it impossible that there should exist a single people, 
 or a single man, who did not feel the necessity of deciding 
 between the two camps, and of giving to one or the other 
 his name and his active adhesion. And nevertheless it is 
 not so. The solidarity of all in support of the principle in 
 which they believe is only understood on one side. And 
 this side, with shame be it said, is that of old authority. 
 
 All the powers whose rallying cry is Authority, are allied 
 for the defensive and for the offensive ; they fulfil amongst 
 each other the duties of fraternity ; when one is attacked 
 the others fly to its aid , in time of peace an universal pro- 
 paganda rallies the means of all. They have a plan, a 
 combined action, and a visible symbol, the Pope. They 
 do not believe in him ; but they feel the want of a common 
 standard, and they support him. Schismatics, orthodox 
 believers, materialists, all those who deny the liberty of the 
 human conscience and its manifestation by acts, join hands 
 around his throne. 
 
 It is not thus with the nations or individuals whose 
 rallying cry is Liberty. They may recognise their brothers 
 in the ideal sphere ; they fail to do so upon the field of 
 reality. Each sustains, defends what he has been able to 
 conquer of liberty for himself; no one exerts himself for the 
 triumph of the principle elsewhere. The life of God is only
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 233 
 
 sacred to them so far as it is diffused in their own sphere ; 
 beyond their own frontiers it becomes indifferent to them : 
 they abandon it to chance, they deliver it over to the 
 enemy. No protection is afforded to the peoples who are 
 tortured and destroyed, no hindrance is offered to the 
 hostile forces which stifle life in its cradle, or prevent the 
 truth from manifesting itself. To the cry of Authority every 
 where and for all, they oppose that of Liberty for those who 
 possess it. To the insolent, audacious intervention exercised 
 by the other camp, they reply : — Neutrality, ?wn-interven- 
 iion, — not for all, for they do nothing to prevent the 
 intervention of others, — but for themselves. Austria and 
 France intervene in Italy ; Prussia in the states of Germany, 
 Russia in Hungary. England, the United States, Switzer- 
 land, fold their arms, and tacitly aid the triumph, which they 
 believe to be iniquitous, of old authority over liberty. Like 
 Pilate, they wash their hands of the blood of the just — they 
 would reply to God with the answer of Cain, Am I my 
 brother's keeper ? 
 
 A people, the Italian people, rises up. It goes straight 
 to the heart of the question, to the palladium of the enemy's 
 camp. It proposes to cut the knot, to emancipate the 
 world, to end the struggle for all by a single blow. 
 Authority has its seat, its source, its radiating centre at 
 Rome. Authority pretends that it lives in the love of all, 
 that it is sanctified by universal consent, that a factious 
 minority is all that opposes it. Italy proves indisputably 
 the reverse. It interrogates publicly, peacefully, the wishes 
 of men in the very place where authority has always reigned 
 without opposition, where it has been able to seduce, mis- 
 lead, and corrupt at its pleasure. An unanimous voice 
 replies : — The authority which governs us is a falsehood ; it is 
 not worthy to guide us, the Pope is no longer our head; we
 
 234 MAZZINI. 
 
 appeal to God, to liberty, and to our conscience. The' royalty 
 of the Pope, all that could be abolished by decree, is 
 abolished. The Pope flees. 
 
 A banner bearing these principle-involving and eternal 
 words, God and the people, floats above the Vatican. Not 
 a man raises his hand to protest in favour of the Pope ; not 
 a man bends the knee before the bulls of excommunication 
 hurled from Gaeta. And to this demonstration, for the 
 benefit of the world's cause, on the part of a people which 
 has always served this cause, how has Protestantism 
 replied? How has England replied?. What has been 
 done to save this people, when, in defiance of all right, and 
 without the smallest provocation, four governments leagued 
 together to crush it, and sent their armies to tear down by 
 brute force the sacred banner of liberty of conscience ? 
 
 There exists great agitation at the present moment in 
 Protestant England on account of the attempted encroach- 
 ments of Catholicism. Think you that these attempts would 
 have taken place if the people's banner were still floating at 
 Rome? Think you that the Pope would have sent his 
 Catholic hierarchy from Gaeta ? 
 
 Papacy excluded from Rome, is, it is well known, Papacy 
 excluded from Italy. Papacy excluded from Italy is 
 Papacy excluded from Europe. Place the Pope at Lyons 
 or Seville — he will no longer be Pope, he will only be 
 a dethroned king. 
 
 Protestantism has not understood this : there is so little 
 remaining of the deep conviction, so little of the enthusiasm 
 which produced the Reformation, that with regard to the 
 great question in dispute at Rome, it assumed an attitude 
 of scepticism, it contented itself by asking whether such or 
 such a man governing in that city belonged to one political 
 school or another, whether he was a partizan of a system
 
 FROM THE TORE TO THE COUNCIL. 235 
 
 of terror or of justice; it entered into a polemic with 
 respect to individuals ; the work, the providential work, 
 which was being accomplished there by instruments 
 destined, whatever might be their character, to disappear 
 the day after, completely escaped its notice. And when 
 Austrians, Neapolitans, and Frenchmen marched against 
 Rome it could not summon up sufficient energy to say : 
 Mold; a question of religious faith is there at issue, and we 
 will not allow it to be decided by brute force. And yet we 
 gave it sufficient time to pronounce this prohibition. 
 
 Protestantism has thus given to the world, I repeat it, 
 a striking demonstration of want of power, of decay. It 
 will expiate it bitterly, if it does not hasten to repair the 
 mistake it has committed. 
 
 Faith begets faith. You cannot expect that men should 
 believe in yours, when they see that it does not furnish you 
 with the consciousness of a right, or the feeling of a duty to 
 fulfil. You have looked on with indifference whilst the 
 liberty of the human soul was being crushed beyond your 
 gates: you will be thought little worthy of defending it within. 
 
 Faith is also wanting to the Pope ; but he has something 
 which replaces it in the eyes of the world : he has the 
 audacity, the obstinacy, and the unscrupulous logic of 
 his false principles. He attacks ; you fortify yourselves for 
 defence : he advances ever, with the continuous motion of 
 the serpent ; you move by fits and starts under the 
 impulse of fear : he says, Servitude for all ; you say, 
 Liberty for us alone. You will not have it ; or rather, 
 you already have it not. You are slaves, in the slavery 
 of your brethren. Hence it is that your contracted 
 inspiration no longer fecundates the souls of men. There is 
 no religion without faith in the solidarity of the human race. 
 
 I have here said what is to me the touch-stone of every
 
 236 MAZZINI. 
 
 faith. When any one says to me : Behold a good man, 
 I ask, How many sotds has he saved / when any one says 
 to me : Behold a religious peojile, I inquire what it has 
 done and suffered to bring humanity to its belief. 
 
 It is to man, and not to a certain number of men, that 
 God has given life, the sun, the fruits of the earth, his law, 
 and the capability of comprehending and of obeying it. It 
 was for all men that Jesus died upon the Cross. And you 
 who honour the name of God and murmur unceasingly the 
 name of Christ, what have you given, what do you give for 
 all men 1 For whom do you die, for whom do you dare 
 martyrdom 1 By what acts do you render testimony to the 
 unity of the human race, of which you are only a member. 
 What work of education do you accomplish upon earth 1 
 You found establishments for the sale of Bibles, you 
 smuggled the divine word across forbidden frontiers ; 
 but know you not that the foundation, the commencement 
 of all education is liberty 1 Have you so completely lost 
 the spirit, are you so blind to all but the dead letter of the 
 law, as not to know that it is to man that God allotted the 
 gift of understanding and of interpreting his will, and that 
 the slave is not a man, but the form, the material part of 
 man alone 1 
 
 And here recurs to me the idea which I expressed above 
 upon the unholy divorce which has taken place between 
 earth and heaven. This divorce is one of the character- 
 istics of the existing Protestant agitation, and it stamps 
 upon it another marked inferiority as compared with the 
 Catholic propaganda. 
 
 Man is one : created in the image of God, he thinks and 
 acts. Thought, Action, and that which causes him to 
 translate his Thought in action, Love : behold his Trinity, 
 the reflection of that mysterious Trinity which lives in God.
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 237 
 
 He who has not the conception or feeling of this Unity — ■ 
 he who would destroy it by dividing faith from works, 
 thought from action, the moral from the practical or the 
 political man, is not truly religious. He would break the 
 chain which attaches earth to heaven. 
 
 Earth and heaven are for me the lowest and the highest 
 steps of the ladder of human progress. Man is placed 
 upon earth not to vegetate, not to expiate, not to contem- 
 plate ; but to progress ; to walk in the path of life 
 according to the Law of which God has placed the germ 
 in his heart ; to accomplish his own education, and that of 
 others, according to the providential design ; to manifest, 
 to practise his belief. The amount and the endurance of 
 this manifestation are the measure of his responsibility 
 fulfilled, of which liberty is the sine qua non. Thought 
 completes itself in action ; faith in works. God thinks 
 only in working. With us weak beings this identification 
 of thought and action can only be obtained step by step, 
 through labour, suffering, and self-sacrifice. But this is 
 the aim of our earthly life and it is faith which gives us 
 strength to attain it. I can conceive religion in no other 
 manner. It teaches us to do the will of God on earth, as 
 it is done in heaven. It is supreme. It gives the law, the 
 principles which political action ought to realise. 
 
 This unity of man has been felt by the Pope ; and, 
 therefore, he evinces that antagonism, of which the follow- 
 ing pages upon the Encyclica will be found to speak ; the 
 very foundation of his doctrine implies it. Pope and King 
 are indissolubly connected : the one completes and defends 
 the other. 
 
 The Pope says : "Be subservient to my word in all that 
 concerns the things of heaven." The King says : "Be 
 subservient to my 7t>ord in all that concerns the things of
 
 238 HAZZINL 
 
 earth." They make use by turns of excommunication and 
 
 bombardment, of the priest and of the executioner. 
 
 The Protestantism of to-day denies human unity, the 
 link between earth and heaven. It pretends to emancipate 
 thought, while leaving action submissive and enslaved. 
 It would join conscience and servitude, slavery and liberty. 
 No possible success can await on its propaganda. 
 
 I have read the writings of the men who protest against 
 the encroachments of Catholic Rome ; I have hearkened to 
 the speeches uttered by them in their meetings. I have 
 not met with a single expression of sympathy for the Rome 
 of the People and for Liberty ; not a single prayer for the 
 emancipation of Italy from the chains which forbid her all 
 movement, all spiritual education. We have nothing to do, 
 they say, with political questions. Is it then by leaving 
 man in the hands of his oppressors that you would elevate 
 and emancipate his soul ? Is it by leaving erect the Idol 
 of blind Force, in the service of Imposture, that you think 
 to raise in the human soul an altar to the God of a free 
 conscience ? Moses broke the idols to pieces ; he knew 
 well that so long as the idols existed there would always be 
 idolaters. 
 
 Every so-called religious agitation against Papacy will be 
 vain which does not take in hand the Italian political 
 question. While the Pope possesses Italy, he will have a 
 footing in every part of Europe. It is the Italian nation 
 alone that can annihilate Papacy. "Would you introduce 
 the light and air of heaven within our prison ? Help us to 
 break open its gates, to throw down its walls ; and the air 
 and the light of God will pour in to invigorate and 
 enlighten us. Help us to reconquer liberty of speech ; 
 you will find that our first word will be Liberty of conscience. 
 Petition your government, not to arrest the progress of
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 239 
 
 Catholicism amongst yourselves — how can it attempt to do 
 so ? — but, remembering for once at least that England also 
 has rights and duties in Europe, to put a stop to the 
 prolonged scandal of a foreign occupation of Rome : and 
 be sure that twenty-four hours after our deliverance the 
 Pope shall flee towards Gaeta, and soon much farther than 
 Gaeta. 
 
 All agitation which does not make this its object will be 
 vain ; not only because Italy bound, gagged, and with the 
 sword of the oppressor at her throat, cannot make any 
 response or derive any advantage from the fraction of truth 
 which may be therein contained, before she has broken 
 that sword ; but also because it is immoral ; because it 
 fails to recognise the unity of man ; because it betrays the 
 sacred duty of rendering assistance to every victim of 
 assassination ; and because it is in reality, I believe, a 
 secret compromise between lukewarm religious belief and 
 political prejudices which it is feared to alarm. 
 
 We have sometimes been asked, if, when once emanci- 
 pated, we should proclaim ourselves Protestants. It is not 
 for individuals to reply. The country, free to interrogate 
 itself, will follow the inspirations that God will send it. 
 Religion is not a matter of contract; and those who 
 address such a question to us, can have but little faith in 
 that which they profess to believe to be the truth. For 
 myself, I would not bargain even for the liberty of my 
 country by profaning my soul with falsehood. But this, 
 with my hand upon my heart, I can answer to them : — 
 
 Catholicism is dead. Religion is eternal. It will be the 
 soul, the thought of the new World. Every man has in his 
 own heart an altar, upon which, if he invoke it in earnest- 
 ness, purity, and love, the spirit of God will descend. 
 Conscience is sacred; it is free. But truth is one, and faith
 
 24° MAZZINI. 
 
 may anticipate the time, when, from the free conscience of 
 enlightened men, beneath the breath of God, shall be given 
 forth a religious Harmony, more mighty, more potent in 
 love and life, than any to which Humanity has yet lent ear. 
 But in order that the death of Catholicism may be re- 
 vealed to men, the air must circulate freely, and reach, in 
 order to destroy, the corpse which stands as yet erect. In 
 order that man may invoke in earnestness, purity, and love, 
 the spirit, the truth of God, he must be emancipated from a 
 state which teaches him immorality, egotism, hatred, and 
 mistrust. And in order that truth may triumph over error, 
 it must be free to proclaim itself in the full light of day- 
 This consummation we can offer in exchange for the 
 support which we demand. 
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 
 
 (From the Italian del ropolo of September 1849.) 
 
 The pages here subjoined were written by me, at the 
 request of an editor, and almost at the stroke of a pen, as 
 far back as 1832. Prefixed to a few copies of a translation 
 of Didier's work upon the Three Principles — they had little 
 or no publicity. This, however, is not my reason for re- 
 printing them. The reason is to be found in their date. 
 Profoundly convinced that the religious question imperi- 
 ously demands a solution ; convinced that Papacy having 
 abused its mission, which was already exhausted, for some 
 four centuries, is now a corrupt institution and a mere 
 mockery of religion; convinced, that having lost its own 
 faith and that of others, lost all inspiration, all under- 
 standing or love of humanity, all power of infusing 
 life in the coming generations, demanding the food
 
 FROM THE rOPE TO THE COUNCIL. 241 
 
 of the soul, — Papacy reduced to a state of negation can 
 produce nothing henceforth but materialism, a condition of 
 society which it can dominate to tyranny, and the degrading 
 worship of the mere interests of religious trade; convinced 
 that the day has arrived for every honest man to break the 
 guilty silence, and to declare to it, as his conscience 
 dictates, Thou art a lie co7idem?icd by God and men : begone : 
 we worship not phantoms ; — I am glad to be able to say to 
 myself and to my readers, that my convictions date from 
 seventeen years ago. Late events have confirmed, they 
 did not inspire them. I know not what it is to be ani- 
 mated by revenge or reaction. Those men who, themselves 
 deprived of all faith, cannot believe in that of others, the 
 men who accused Lamennais of having abandoned the 
 Papacy because a cardinal's hat had not been offered him, 
 will say to me ; Your war against Papacy is an answer to 
 the defeat of Rome. I therefore point out, not to them, 
 but to those who might be deceived by them, my opinions 
 in 1832. Those opinions, conceived in the death-like 
 repose of an exile imposed by a Prince and not by the 
 Pope, might err through audacity but not through anger. 
 Even when I saw the bombs furrow the sky of Rome, and 
 foreign soldiers, as in the middle ages, assault her walls, 
 hewing down her valiant sons in the name of an institution 
 in which they did not believe, I did not feel anger, but the 
 de< pest pity and grief; pity for Pius, who, not naturally 
 bad, but misled by wicked men and by the pride of princely 
 dominion, will die with remorse in his soul; grief that the 
 Papacy should not be able or willing to sink solemnly, like 
 the sun in the immensity of the ocean, conscious of the 
 religious transformation which Providence is maturing for 
 humanity, and itself transmitting the connecting link and 
 the initiating word to believers. But it seems to be 
 
 35 1
 
 2 42 MAZZINI. 
 
 decreed that great institutions at the expiration of the 
 period of life allotted to them should be extinguished in 
 mire or in blood. 
 
 It is over seventeen years since I wrote : — 
 
 " Italy, setting aside the great and important spectacle of 
 a people aspiring to regain its unity, independence, and 
 liberty, presents at the present time a phenomenon that 
 merits the attention of the peoples, and of all those who 
 watch with attention the progress of humanity. In the 
 midst of all the attempts at insurrection which spring up and 
 expire to be reproduced the day after, in the midst of that 
 universal ferment which extends from the Alps to the 
 Pharo, like a boiling spring, whose source is in the Roman 
 soil, — a great fact, an European fact, is being accomplished. 
 There is something more in this land than an oppressed 
 and excited population ; something more than a multitude 
 desirous of the amelioration of its material condition ; 
 something more than a few communes insisting upon their 
 franchise. There is the development of a moral revolution, 
 the manifestation of a moral law, the proclamation of a 
 principle of moral liberty. There is the human race at the 
 gates of Rome, imperiously demanding its franchise." 
 
 " Papacy is Expiring. — Papacy is Extinct." 
 
 " The moral power of the Papacy has long been dead in 
 Europe. Luther destroyed it by withdrawing from it the 
 north. It sufficed for a single city to deny that power, and 
 to be able to hold out in its denial, to inflict upon it a mor- 
 tal wound, and to show that Papacy had fulfilled its mission
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL, 243 
 
 upon earth, and no longer corresponded to the wants and 
 intellectual condition of humanity. 
 
 " From the time when the authority of the hand that 
 once ruled urbi et orbi was disputed by one-third of 
 Europe, the death-struggle of Papacy commenced. Papacy 
 is a religion, and the necessary characteristic of religious 
 unity is universality. From that time forward the power of 
 Catholicism waned. Every Pope, upon ascending the 
 throne, found the extent of his dominion diminished. It 
 was like a territory the shores of which are insensibly con- 
 sumed by the ocean ; a flower which every breath of wind 
 despoils. As if impelled by some powerful hand — by the 
 hand of progressive civilisation — princes, peoples, philo- 
 sophers, sectarians, voluntarily or involuntarily conspired to 
 overthrow the colossus whose head was in the clouds and 
 whose feet were of clay. To throw off the yoke of Rome 
 was, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the pre- 
 dominant idea of Italian and foreign governments. They 
 considered themselves great and strong every time that 
 they had resisted, and triumphed over the pretensions of 
 Rome. 
 
 " Naples refused her tribute, violated her commands, and 
 commissioned writers to dispute the papal rights ; and if 
 afterwards the Neapolitan government allowed the men on 
 whom it had imposed this office to be persecuted by priests 
 and inquisitors, it was but the habit of tyranny, which avails 
 itself of the instrument, and then destroys it ; but the fruits 
 remained. Joseph II. in Germany and Leopold in Italy 
 assailed Papacy with the energy of reform. The priest 
 Ricci and the synod of Pistoia encouraged the emancipa- 
 tion. The Jansenists spread themselves everywhere, and 
 endeavoured to recall the ancient religious severity of 
 primitive Christianity. Voltaire published a crusade against
 
 244 MAZZINI. 
 
 Catholic Rome, and supported it, if not with profundity of 
 thought and historical philosophy, yet with an activity and 
 variety of weapons truly prodigious. Then the torrent 
 broke forth ; the revolutionary lava which swept the entire 
 past from its throne. Then Napoleon, imprisoning the 
 Pope, dragging him to Paris, threatening him, and obliging 
 him to compromise politically with him, completed the dis- 
 grace and abasement of Papacy. Afterwards, the giant 
 having fallen, and the political inertia allowing a return to 
 the peaceful studies of philosophy, the spiritual and eclectic 
 schools arose — schools which, without denying the religious 
 sentiment, ceased to recognise Papacy as an essential 
 element thereto. 
 
 " In the entire Catholic world, De Maistre alone remained 
 to the Pope — De Maistre, who made him the victim of a 
 system logically deduced, joining with him the absolute 
 king and the executioner; Catholicism, despotism, and 
 capital punishment being, according to De Maistre, the 
 three bases of Society ; the three elements, in fact, of the 
 old world, which the new one was destroying. To-day 
 Catholicism is extinct. It is necessary to repeat it, to repeat 
 it to all, in order that they may direct their efforts to found 
 a new unity. 
 
 " Humanity has made a step in advance, and is seeking 
 a new symbol. Attempts at new religions, ridiculous in 
 themselves, yet show that a void has been created. The 
 few who have arisen to uphold the Catholic banner, en- 
 deavouring to associate it with a liberty of their own, betray 
 their utter powerlessness to support it alone : every religion 
 has had apostles, when it was dying ; but their lamentations 
 are over a corpse. They deceived, and still deceive them- 
 selves as to the number of their followers, because some, 
 seeing victory secure, turn back to examine this symbol ;
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 245 
 
 and they do not perceive that it is a poetical feeling towards 
 a grand ruin, not a return of faith, which, once extinguished, 
 is never renewed. The Avenir has ceased to appear : 
 Lamennais, a man who perhaps would have been a Calvin 
 had he found Catholicism rooted and secure, is in Rome to 
 behold the idol overthrown, and to free himself from an 
 illusion ; the European Review languishes ; Chateaubriand 
 is mute, and will remain so. Papacy is extinct — a worn-out 
 form, preserved yet a little while for the veneration of the 
 lovers of antiquity. The Pope, not being able to convince, 
 puts to death. He protects his inviolability by armed 
 ruffians. He defends the vicarship of Christ with Swiss 
 and Austrian bayonets. No other roof now remains to him 
 but the cupola of St. Peter ; and one day or other the 
 banner of liberty waving from the temple shall drive him 
 even from that asylum. Rash futile excommunications 
 alone remain to him — old arms, worn-out for three ages ; 
 and he casts them about at random, like weapons abandoned 
 by a flying man. 
 
 " The destruction of the Papacy was inevitable in the 
 destinies of humanity, and reveals the action of a social 
 element hitherto neglected, and which threatens to avenge 
 itself, the popular element. Papacy was formerly a power, 
 because it supported itself upon the people. It alone con- 
 stituted a visible centre of association. It recognised, to a 
 certain degree, the principle of capacity, excluding in the 
 earlier times the aristocracy, opening the way to the man of 
 the people, to the serf, to arrive at ecclesiastical dignity. 
 It waged war against feudalism ; war against princely 
 power : it opposed to the spectre, the altar. Therefore the 
 people in Italy were principally Guelph, while in the rest of 
 Europe they adhered to the throne, where the kings warred 
 against the predominance of the seignorial element. After
 
 246 MAZZINI. 
 
 the death of Julius II., the last great Pope, when the 
 pontiffs perceived that the people began to feel itself power- 
 ful, and to look for the revealer of its destinies elsewhere 
 than in the Vatican, they leagued themselves with the 
 kings. This unequal alliance, contracted between the 
 Guelph and Ghibelline principles, sworn enemies for ages, 
 is the most convincing proof of the fall of Papacy. But, 
 even before this, the destroying worm had already invaded 
 the idol ; the Papacy introduced the germ of its own 
 destruction, when it assumed and enlarged its temporal 
 dominion. It is necessary for religions to hold themselves 
 supreme in an intellectual and moral sphere. Contact 
 with facts and material phenomena destroys them ; taking 
 away their prestige, and bringing before the multitude the 
 metaphysical principle which shapes them, applied to the 
 thousand cases which admit or call for examination. At 
 the present time, the people is neither Guelph nor 
 Ghibelline, but stands aloof, distrustful of both parties; 
 abhorring the one, and abhorring and despising the other ; 
 invoking the Moses who shall disclose to them the promised 
 land. 
 
 " And yet, Papacy still stands erect ; although worn out 
 and undermined on all sides, it stands erect, a pretext for 
 the machinations of absolutist governments ; a visible 
 centre alike for cunning and incapability ; a loathsome 
 symbol ; but still keeping the field, and disputing the 
 ground from those who would lay there the foundations of 
 another temple. While the idol stands, its shadow will 
 continue to cast darkness around ; priests, Jesuits, and 
 fanatics will shelter themselves beneath its shade to disturb 
 the world ; while it stands, discord will exist between moral 
 and material society, between right and fact, between the 
 present and the imminent future. And the Papacy will
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 247 
 
 stand until new-born Italy shall overthrow the throne on 
 which it is upheld. In Italy, then, is the solution of the 
 European question. To Italy belongs the high office of 
 proclaiming the general emancipation, solemn and accom- 
 plished. And Italy will fulfil the duty entrusted to her 
 by civilisation. Then will the peoples hasten to gather 
 round another principle. Then will the south of Europe be 
 placed in equilibrium with the north. 
 
 "Awakened Italy shall enter into the European family. 
 How solemn her resurrection ! Twice has she awakened, 
 since the fall of pagan Rome closed up the way of ancient 
 civilisation, and she became the cradle of the new. The 
 first time a Word went forth from Italy, which substituted 
 an European spiritual unity for the triumph of material 
 force. The second time she diffused over the world the 
 example of civilisation in arts and literature. The third 
 time her mighty hand will destroy the symbol of the middle 
 ages and will substitute social unity for the old spiritual 
 unity. From Rome alone can the Word of modem unity go 
 forth, because from Rome alone can come the absolute destruc- 
 tion of the ancient unity. But — because catholic unity is 
 extinct, because Papacy has done its work, making of 
 itself a mere prince and the servant of princes in an epoch 
 fatal to princes — we must not conclude that religion is 
 extinct, and that henceforward political theories only are 
 to rule humanity. Political theories have now more than 
 ever need of a religious sanction. Without this they must 
 be always uncertain, deprived of all secure foundation, or 
 firm support. The general will is a fitting foundation for 
 governments ; but where the general principles which 
 regulate the moral world are not evidenced in their acts, 
 where they are not reduced to maxims, to recognised laws, 
 there will never be a general will. The discovery of these
 
 248 MAZZINI. 
 
 principles and the deduction of their inviolability, by 
 proving them of origin superior to the power of the 
 individual, is precisely the task of present civilisation. 
 And to this end should the efforts of all minds desirous 
 of establishing the social edifice upon a solid foundation be 
 directed. 
 
 " Religion is eternal. Religion — superior to philosophy 
 — is the bond that unites men in the communion of a 
 recognised generating Principle, and in the consciousness of 
 a common tendency and mission ; it is the Word which 
 shall raise the standard of Humanity in the midst of the 
 nations of the earth, 
 
 " Religion is Humanity. 
 
 " Men have need of unity. Without unity progress is 
 impossible. There may be movement, but it will not be 
 uniform or concentrated. There will be first disorder ; 
 then opposition ; finally anarchy. 
 
 " Men cannot remain in a state of anarchy. When they 
 are left to it, when the directing minds do not hasten to 
 extinguish it by the revelation of moral Principles, scepti- 
 cism, materialism, and indifference to every thing superior 
 to the individual are introduced into the struggle. Amongst 
 us, the Catholic faith being shaken by the progress of 
 intelligence, and the shafts of ridicule, men turned anxiously 
 to any reforms, any doctrines that promised to substitute a 
 new order of things for the one destroyed. Unfortunately, 
 tyranny, remaining the master, forbade reforms; forbade that 
 new ways should be opened to the people, to gather round 
 something positive and secure. It followed, then, that men's 
 minds being unsettled, failing to perceive the new Word, and 
 having lost the old, either took refuge again in superstition, 
 or adopted materialism ; and at the present time there is, 
 consequently, a want of harmony between the masses and
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 249 
 
 the educated classes of the nation ; there is mistrust on one 
 side, indifference upon the other. There is indifference, 
 because materialism is not a belief. It has no faith, no 
 consciousness of something higher ; it recognises no 
 mission — lives in itself, by itself, with itself — looks at facts, 
 and neglects principles — and remains a cold and calculating 
 doctrine of individualism. With such a doctrine great 
 peoples are not created, because great peoples are those 
 who represent and develop an idea in humanity ; and 
 materialism does not produce, but rather excludes every 
 general idea, making self-interest a law for every thing ; 
 self-interest, a doctrine ever variable, differing in every 
 individual, according to years, circumstances, the accidents 
 of climate, and other physical causes. The consequences 
 of this state of things in Italy are evident to all. 
 
 " There is no movement in literature, in the sciences, in 
 the arts, in philosophy, in law. There is no political 
 movement, save of a reactionary nature. 
 
 "In literature, men well known for the servility of their 
 political doctrines preach liberty of the mind, independence 
 from rules, the emancipation of poetic genius ; claiming for 
 themselves the right of conducting the intellect through 
 the ruins of the middle ages, or the ravings of mysticism ; 
 whilst men loving liberty and the progressive development 
 of civil government, refuse the same progressive develop- 
 ment to literature, restricting it within certain codes, as 
 antiquated as Papacy, without perceiving that the human 
 intellect cannot divide itself in two halves, and advance 
 with one-half whilst it stands still with the other. History 
 has become a collection of facts, and nothing more ; an 
 embellishment, often a burden to the memory ; neither a 
 revealer of wisdom, nor a guide to the future ; because 
 where you do not put forward prominently facts of a
 
 250 MAZZINI. 
 
 certain order, where you do not relate them in a manner 
 which reveals an idea, where you do not deduce from them 
 a moral law, what can one fact teach you to-day which 
 another may not falsify to-morrow 1 What other tendency 
 can history give you, if not that most fatal tendency 
 to doubt 1 Philosophy does not exist among us. We have 
 some observations on facts ; some researches concerning the 
 manner by which certain physiological phenomena are 
 produced, but there is no science of causes — there are no 
 primary laws of the intellect. Political movement exists, 
 because where tyranny reaches its utmost limit it neces- 
 sarily moves the minds of men to hatred and to vengeance, 
 if to nothing else. But enduring constancy in sacrifice, 
 faith in the future and in ourselves, and above all unity of 
 symbol, certainty of the same aim, the science of means, 
 and unwearied propagandism do not exist among us, or are 
 very rare. There is indignation, grief, individual courage ; 
 but there is discouragement, division, suspicion, mistrust of 
 everything and of everybody. 
 
 " It is of the most urgent importance to withdraw men's 
 minds from such a state — and for this there is no hope but 
 in a powerful unity — in one faith — one bond — one common 
 hope. 
 
 " Do you desire to give life and movement to literature, 
 to the arts, and to science ? Harmonise them together : 
 point out the intimate connection which runs through all, 
 and give to all a common aim. 
 
 "Do you desire that intellect should advance 1 ? — Direct 
 it towards the same aim : do not enchain one of its 
 faculties whilst you emancipate another. Inspire it with a 
 grand conception which will render it fruitful, give it a 
 direction, and trust it to itself. 
 
 " Do you desire that your citizens should become free 1
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 251 
 
 Begin by giving thetn a lofty sense of their own dignity, of 
 their own inviolability, of their own power. Do not lower 
 the conception of liberty to them, but raise them to it : 
 convert it into a mission, and create them its apostles : say to 
 them that there is a moral law superior to them, which binds 
 them all, in one bond, to the execution of a great design ; 
 to the sacrifice, if necessary, of the individual to society. 
 
 " Find, in short, a unity — and prefix it to reform, and to 
 all the efforts towards it. Present yourselves to the nation 
 with a table of duties and of rights. 
 
 " Proclaim, in words that the multitudes will understand, 
 the moral principles which should preside over their 
 regeneration. 
 
 " Religion is the sanction of those rights, of those duties, 
 of those principles. 
 
 " Papacy is extinct ; but Religion is eternal : Papacy is 
 only a form, a form now antiquated, worn out by the idea 
 that has undergone a development, and which seeks to 
 manifest itself. 
 
 " Catholicism is extinct ; but you who watch over its bier, 
 remember that Catholicism is only a sect, an erroneous 
 application, the materialism of Christianity. Remember 
 that Christianity is a revelation and a statement of principles, 
 of certain relations of man with that which is beyond him- 
 self, which were unknown to Paganism. Remember that 
 those principles are the same that are inscribed upon the 
 banner of all lovers of liberty. Remember that religions 
 are not changed by men, but by time, progress, and the 
 manifestation of some new principle ; and that whosoever 
 attempts to substitute himself for the age and for those 
 causes, is guilty of a foolish and fatal mistake. Remember, 
 in short, that a religious principle has always presided over 
 two-thirds of the revolutions of single peoples, and all the
 
 252 MAZZINI. 
 
 great revolutions of humanity ; and that to desire to abolish 
 it where you have no other to substitute, where there is 
 neither education, nor any profound conviction of general 
 duties, nor a uniform conscience, nor the habit of high 
 social virtue, is the same thing as to create a void, to open 
 an abyss, which you yourselves will perhaps be the first to fill. 
 " Perhaps in religion, as in politics, the age of the symbol 
 is passing away, and a solemn manifestation may be 
 approaching of the Idea as yet hidden in that symbol. 
 Perhaps the discovery of a new relation — that of the 
 individual to humanity — may lay the foundation of a new 
 religious bond, as the relation of the individual with nature 
 was the soul of paganism ; as the relation of the individual 
 with God has been the soul of Christianity. But whatever 
 may be in store for the future, whatever new revelation of 
 our destinies awaits us, it behoves us meanwhile not to 
 forget that Christianity was the first to put forward the word 
 eqtiality, parent of liberty — that it was the first to deduce 
 the rights of man from the inviolability of his human nature 
 — that it was the first to open a path to the relationship of the 
 individual with humanity, containing in its doctrine of human 
 brotherhood the germ of a principle, of a law of association" 
 
 To these thoughts written in 1832, succeeding years, and 
 especially the two last, have given a solemn confirmation. 
 A Pope arose, whose good disposition, progressive instincts, 
 and love of popularity rendered him an exception to the 
 Popes of later times, and Providence, as if to teach mankind 
 the absolute powerlessness of the institution, disclosed to 
 him, in the love and in the illusions of the people, the path 
 to a new life. So great is the fascination exercised by great 
 memories, so great the power of ancient customs, so eager 
 the desire for Authority as the guide and sanction of their
 
 PROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 253 
 
 progress, in these multitudes who are said to be agitated by 
 the spirit of anarchy, — that a word of pardon and tolerance 
 from the Pope's lips sufficed to gather round him, in an 
 enthusiasm and intoxication of affection, friends and 
 enemies, believers and unbelievers, the ignorant and the 
 men of thought. One long cry, the cry of millions ready to 
 rush to martyrdom or victory at his nod, saluted him as 
 their father and benefactor, the regenerator of the Catholic 
 faith and of humanity. The experience of three ages, and 
 the inexorable logic of ideas, were at once forgotten ; writers 
 whose intellect and opinions alike had rendered them 
 influential until then as adversaries, now employed them- 
 selves in founding around that One man systems destined 
 to prepare for him the way to a splendid initiative. Many 
 advocates of liberty of conscience, whom the spectacle of 
 anarchy displayed by the Protestant sects had always 
 disturbed, now began to doubt. The few believers in the 
 future church remained silent and thoughtful. Could it be 
 that history had decided too rashly ? Could it be amongst 
 the secrets of Providence that an institution which for ten 
 centuries at least had given life and movement to Europe, 
 should rise again, reconciled with the life and progress of 
 humanity, from its own tomb ? Throughout the whole 
 civilised world men's minds, troubled and excited, awaited 
 the word which was to issue from the Vatican. 
 
 And where now is Pius IX. ? 
 
 In the camp of the enemy : irrevocably disjoined from 
 the progressive destinies of humanity ; irrevocably adverse 
 to the desires — to the aspirations which agitate his peoplo 
 and the people of believers. The experiment is complete. 
 The gulf between Papacy and the world is open. No 
 earthly power can close it up. 
 
 Impelled by the impulses of his heart to seek for popularity
 
 254 MAZZINI. 
 
 and affection, but drawn on by the all powerful logie 
 of the principle he represents to the severity of absolute 
 dictatorship ; seduced by the universal movement of men's 
 minds, by living examples in other countries, and by the 
 spirit of the age, to feel, to understand the sacred words of 
 progress, of people, of free brotherhood, but incapable of 
 making himself their interpreter ; fearful of the conse- 
 quences, and trembling lest the people, raised to a new- 
 consciousness of its own faculties and of its own rights, 
 should question the authority of the pontificate — Pius IX. 
 vacillated contemptibly between the two paths presented to 
 him, muttered words of emancipation, which he neither 
 intended nor knew how to realise, and promises of country 
 and independence to Italy, which his followers betrayed by 
 conspiring with Austria. Then, struck with sudden terror, 
 he fled before the multitudes who cried aloud to him 
 courage; he sheltered himself under the protection of a 
 Prince, the executioner of his own subjects; he imbibed 
 his tendencies, and in order to revenge himself for the 
 quiet with which Pome, urged in vain to a civil war, was 
 organising a new government — he solicited foreign aid, and 
 he who, from a horror of bloodshed, had shortly before 
 endeavoured to withdraw Poman assistance from the 
 Lombard struggle, agreed that French, Austrian, Neapolitan, 
 and Spanish bayonets should rebuild his throne. Now lost 
 amid the fallacies of secret protocols, the servant of his 
 protectors, the servant of all except of duty and of the 
 desires of those who hoped in him ; — he wanders near the 
 frontiers of Rome without attempting to re-enter the city, 
 as if kept back by the phantoms of the slain. The Louis 
 XVI. of Papacy, he has destroyed it for ever. The cannon- 
 ball discharged by his allies against the Vatican gave the 
 last blow to the institution.
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 255 
 
 Whilst these things were happening, a Prince was 
 pursuing a similar course in the north of our peninsula, 
 accompanied by the same hopes, the same illusions 
 and delusions of the peoples. He was saluted by the 
 title of the Sword of Italy. The noblest spirits from 
 all parts pointed out to him Austria and the Alps, and 
 suspended, in order to make the last trial of monarchy, the 
 propagandism of their most cherished ideas. He was pre- 
 ceded by the encouragement of all Europe, and followed by 
 a numerous and valiant army. Where died Charles Albert 1 ? 
 
 Thus has providence shown to our people, desirous of the 
 risht, but lukewarm in faith and too credulous in tho 
 illusions of the old world, the powerlessness of monarchy 
 to ensure the safety of Italy, and the irreconcilability of 
 Papacy with the free progress of humanity. The dualism 
 of the middle ages is henceforward a mere form without 
 life or soul : the Guelph and Ghibelline insignia are now 
 the insignia of the tomb. Neither Pope, nor King ! God 
 and the people only shall henceforth disclose to us the 
 regions of the future. 
 
 The Spirit of God descends now upon the multitudes : 
 individuals privileged in intellect and heart collect, elimi- 
 nate, and express the results of popular inspiration — hence 
 their power of initiation — but they do not create or destroy. 
 For the dogma of absolute, immutable authority concentrated 
 in an individual, or in an immutable Power, is being 
 substituted that of the progressive authority of the People, 
 the collective and lasting interpreter of the law of God. 
 
 This principle, accepted by the people as the highest 
 power in the sphere of political life, under the name of 
 Constituent Assembly, will have its inevitable application 
 in the sphere of religious life. This application will be 
 named the Council.
 
 256 MAZZIN1. 
 
 Life is One. You cannot arrange its different manifesta- 
 tions so that they can remain independent, or find contra- 
 dictory expression, without introducing anarchy. You 
 cannot say to the people, Thou art half free and half 
 enslaved ; social life is thine, but religious life belongs to 
 others. You cannot dismember the soul. Liberty is the 
 gift of God, who rules over, blesses, and renders fruitful all 
 the faculties of man, his creature. 
 
 And the Pope knows it: he knows he can only reign in 
 Rome as a despot. The political concessions that he may 
 make will be de facto only, not de jure ; and his creatures 
 will withdraw them the day after. Who thinks differently 
 deceives himself. Governments often hasten their fate by 
 suicide ; but never consciously. 
 
 And we know it well. Upon Pope and upon King, by 
 the slow but inevitable providential education of the human 
 race, and in the name of the inviolability of mind, weighs 
 an equal condemnation. 
 
 The question between the temporal and spiritual power 
 is misunderstood by many ; and it is important to reduce it 
 to its true signification. To regard it as anything more 
 than a protest against the principle of absolute authority 
 represented by the Pope — to seek to furnish through it a 
 positive organic foundation to society — would tend to 
 withdraw the earth and man from religion. 
 
 Religion and politics are inseparable. Without religion 
 political science can only create despotism or anarchy. Wo 
 seek neither the one nor the other. For us, life is an 
 educational problem, society the medium of developing it, 
 and of reducing it to action. Religion is the highest 
 educational principle ; politics are the application of that 
 principle to the various manifestations of human existence. 
 The ideal remains in God : society should be so arranged as
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 257 
 
 to approach to it as nearly as is possible upon earth. 
 Worshippers all of God : we should seek to conform our 
 acts to his law. Thought is the spirit ; its translation into 
 action, into visible external works, is the social fact. To 
 pretend, then, to separate entirely and for ever earthly 
 things from those of heaven, the temporal from the 
 spiritual, is neither moral, logical, nor possible. But 
 when the Power representing a religious principle no longer 
 possesses or inspires faith — when, through ages of error, 
 and through the progress of the people, all vital communion 
 has ceased between that power and humanity — when it no 
 longer possesses any initiative, but only the strength of 
 resistance, the first form assumed by dissent is that of 
 protest and separation. Society, before decreeing the 
 final condemnation of that power, and of the principle 
 upon which it is supported, separates it from its own 
 movement, isolating it in a sphere of inaction, where 
 opinion can judge it fearlessly and dispassionately. Then 
 is raised the cry for the separation of the temporal from 
 the spiritual ; and that cry, for those who understand the 
 secret instincts of the people, means : — 
 
 "Your mission is fulfilled; withdraw. Our life, our 
 progress, spring no longer from you. The principle which 
 you represent is not ours. We no longer believe in you. 
 In our hearts a purer, larger, and more efficacious religious 
 conception is fermenting, which is not yours. And since 
 you either will not or cannot accept it, remain alone. A 
 solemn memorial of the past which will never return, you 
 are now naught but an idol, a form without life or soul. 
 God and religion remain with us ; with us who feel 
 ourselves better than you, and more capable of guiding 
 ourselves through the paths of our earthly country, 
 which should be for us a step towards heaven, a field for 
 
 352
 
 258 MAZZINI. 
 
 exertion in the mission of the fraternal education of 
 humanity." 
 
 And when, — conscious or unconscious of its own mission, 
 — the Roman Assembly, raising in front of the Vatican the 
 symbol of popular majesty, and inscribing thereon the new 
 formula of the religious bond to believers, the sacred words, 
 God and the people, declared that the temporal power of 
 the Pope had fallen, de facto and de jure, — that decree 
 proclaimed : — 
 
 "Society banishes you, O Pope, from its fold. Your 
 proved impotence renders all communion of affection, of 
 works, of aspiration between us, impossible. You ought to 
 have guided us ; but whilst our souls, irradiated with new 
 light, foresee a vaster ideal, and our brows sweat blood in 
 clearing the obstacles from our way, you, dazzled and 
 alarmed, do but mutter to humanity the old formulae of the 
 middle ages from which all virtue was extracted ages ago; old 
 doctrines of blind resignation to evils that we can overcome, 
 and which the Christian's prayer bids us overcome — implor- 
 ing that the kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven. What 
 progress have we accomplished through you, for many ages ? 
 What victims have you taught us to save % To what classes 
 of sufferers, in mind or in body, have we, through your 
 agency, extended a brother's hand, and said, Sit with us at 
 the table of equals : rejoice with us in the communion of 
 souls, because for thee also Christ has given his blood ? A 
 people arose in the name of the Cross against the oppres- 
 sion of the Crescent, and whilst men, stigmatised by you as 
 unbelievers, ran from all parts, re-baptised to faith by the 
 hope to conquer or die for that sign, you spoke not to that 
 people a single word of comfort or benediction ! Another 
 people, dear to the church for its faith, and for the long 
 and bloody sacrifices which it has made for its sake—
 
 FROM THE POPE TO THE COUNCIL. 259 
 
 raised, in the name of its violated temples, destroyed 
 liberties, and abolished traditions, that national standard 
 which once arrested the invading Mahometan under the 
 walls of Vienna, and you — blessed its executioner ! And 
 we, thrilling with the lofty idea of love, of equality, of 
 liberty, arose saying : We will make of Italy an altar upon 
 which we will join hands to pronounce the third Word of 
 unity and life for humanity ; — Father bless and guide us ; — 
 but you, having lost all understanding of the mission of 
 humanity and of the providential scheme, through ages 
 of prostitution with the princes of the earth, distrustful 
 of yourself, of us, of the world, and of Providence itself, — 
 drew back in terror. You could do nothing but lament 
 and curse. The energy of faith, the power of sacrifice ; 
 the word that consoles and animates, are no longer yours. 
 Our followers die for their faith ; you for your faith — flee." 
 
 The belief in absolute authority embodied, by the election 
 of the few, or by the chance of birth in an individual, is 
 for ever extinguished in Europe. Belief in Papacy is 
 therefore extinct. The revolt of the human mind against 
 divine right applied to princely power inevitably ascends 
 to the Pope, who protects those princes by his word and by 
 his consecration. Papacy, like monarchy, is a corpse. 
 The corruption which is generated around both institutions 
 is only the consequence of their internal decay. 
 
 National sovereignty is the remedy universally accepted 
 for preserving society from the total absence of authority, 
 from anarchy. The sovereignty of the Church — by the 
 church we understand the People of Believers — must pie- 
 serve society from the absence of all religious principle and 
 authority. 
 
 The Constituent Assembly and the Council: these are 
 the prince and the pope of the future. Those mistaken
 
 2 6o MAZZINL 
 
 men who persist in upholding monarchy by sophisms, 
 expedients, and false doctrines, will not save it ; they do 
 but condemn society to a longer period of civil war, amidst 
 illusions, delusions, conspiracies, and violent reaction. 
 Those mistaken men who persist in upholding Papacy by 
 sophisms, expedients, and false doctrines, will not save 
 it ; they condemn society to many more years of immo- 
 rality, doubt, and materialism. 
 
 Bury the dead ; join hands in loving act and thought, 
 and go forward. God created us for life ; and do you fear 
 that he will not reveal himself to his creatures, when, — 
 assembled to interrogate their own hearts upon their own 
 belief and to study the ways of the future, — they invoke 
 his aid ?
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION AND 
 PROSPECTS. 
 
 {First published in the " Westminster Review? April 2, 1852.) 
 
 The literature of the Continent during the last few years 
 has been essentially political, revolutionary, and warlike. 
 Out of ten historical works, seven at least speak to us, 
 from a favourable point of view or otherwise, of a revolu- 
 tion now extinct ; out of ten polemical, political, economi- 
 cal, or other works, seven at least proclaim or combat a 
 revolution about to take place. The first bear the impress 
 of terror; the last are full of gigantic hopes, though most 
 imperfectly defined. Calm has fied from the minds of 
 Continental writers. Poetry is silent, as if frightened by the 
 storm now gathering in the hearts of men. -Romance 
 becomes rarer every day ; it would find no readers. Pure 
 art is a myth. Style itself is changed; when it is not 
 commonplace, when it retains something of that individual 
 originality which every style ought to have, it is sharp, 
 cutting, biting. The pen seems, as it were, sword-shaped; 
 all the world thinks and writes as if it felt itself on the eve 
 of a battle. 
 
 From the midst of this tempest, which I point out, 
 because to sleep is to perish amid the storm, voices are 
 heard exclaiming, " Beware ! Society is in danger. Anarchy
 
 262 MAZZIN1. 
 
 threatens us. The barbarians are at our gates. Revolu- 
 tions destroy all the guarantees of order ; from change to 
 change we are rushing into nothingness. We have con- 
 ceded too much ; we must retrace our steps and strengthen 
 power at all price." Other voices reply to them, — "It is 
 loo late, your society is dead, corrupted ; hasten to bury it. 
 The salvation of the world is in us, in an entirely new order 
 of things, in a society founded upon a basis diametrically 
 opposed to yours." Flags are raised on high in infinite 
 variety: Liberty, Authority, Nationality, 1815. Labour, 
 Property, Rights, Duties, Association, Individualism — all 
 these devices are displayed aloft. It is the night of the 
 Brocksberg— a sort of intellectual and moral chaos, to 
 which scarcely anything analogous is to be found, unless 
 we go back some eighteen centuries in the history of the 
 world, to the fall of the Roman Empire ; when the ancient 
 gods were dying; when the human mind was wavering 
 between the sceptical epicureanism of the masters, and the 
 aspiration of the slaves to the Unknown God ; when the 
 earth trembled under the steps of unknown races, impelled 
 by a mysterious irresistible power towards the centre of 
 European society. 
 
 What is the signification of a crisis thus prolonged, not- 
 withstanding all the efforts which are made to overcome it ? 
 Have these barbarians of our days a Rome in which great 
 destinies are to be accomplished, and towards which, like 
 Attila and his hordes, they are impelled by an invisible 
 hand ; or do they march onward to lose themselves in 
 deserts ; without a purpose, without a tomb, without leaving 
 any useful memorable trace in history ? Are we advancing 
 towards anarchy or towards a new mode of things, — towards 
 dissolution or towards a transformed life? All ask them- 
 selves this question; all could resolve it, if the point of view
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 26.0, 
 
 u 
 
 of each man were not narrowed by his position in some one 
 of the adverse camps ; by the now prevailing habit of judg- 
 ing of the depth, the intensity, and the direction of the 
 European current by the passing ebullitions of the surface ; 
 and by a prejudice, presently to be defined, which for half- 
 a-century has influenced almost all appreciations of the 
 political situation. 
 
 And yet this question must be solved. It is a vital one. 
 It necessarily contains a rule for our actions. A law of 
 Solon decreed that those who in an insurrection abstained 
 from taking part on one side or the other should be 
 degraded. It was a just and holy law, founded on the 
 belief, — then instinctive in the heart of Solon, but now com- 
 prehended and expressed in a thousand formula;, — in the 
 solidarity of humanity. It would be just now more than 
 ever. What ! you are in the midst of the uprising, not of a 
 town, but of the whole human race ; you see brute force 
 on the one side, and right on the other; you march between 
 proscription and martyrdom ; between the scaffold and the 
 altar; whole nations are struggling under oppression; 
 generations are proscribed; men slaughter each other at 
 your very doors ; they die by hundreds, by thousands, 
 l" hting for or against an idea ; this idea is either good or 
 evil ; and you, continuing the while to call yourselves men 
 and Christians, would claim the right of remaining neutral? 
 You cannot do so without moral degradation. Neutrality, 
 that is to say, indifference between good and evil, the just 
 and the unjust, liberty and oppression, is simply Atheism. 
 
 Let us, then, endeavour to distinguish all that there is of 
 permanent from all that is merely accessory and transitory 
 in the crisis; all that will remain, and which demands 
 satisfaction, from that which is only a momentary ebullition, 
 the dross or scum of mclal in fusion. The question now is,
 
 264 MAZZINL 
 
 how to carry forward the balance of the past half-century to 
 the credit of the half-century to come. I shall endeavour 
 to do this as rapidly as possible ; not as summarily, how- 
 ever, as their Excellencies the ambassadors of France, 
 Austria, Russia, and of the thirty-five or thirty-six States of 
 Germany. 
 
 Their Excellencies have very recently made a discovery 
 which would remarkably simplify our solution if we could 
 believe them upon their word. According to them, there 
 are in London four or five persons who are the cause of all 
 the disturbances of the Continent. They walk abroad, and 
 all Europe is agitated ; they associate themselves for an 
 object, whatever it may be, and the whole of Europe asso- 
 ciates itself with them. England has only to abandon her 
 noblest privilege, that of exercising a free hospitality, and lo 
 drive these men across the ocean, and Europe would sleep 
 in peace under the baton of Austria, the knout of Russia, 
 the cavalletto of the Pope. Pity that Lord Granville should 
 not have reached to the height of their Excellencies ! Pity 
 that for such a peace he should scruple to violate English 
 law and English honour. 
 
 No ; the agitation in Europe is not the work of a few 
 individuals, of a few refugees, be they who they may ; and 
 there is something in this opinion sad and ridiculous at the 
 same time : I say sad, because it evidently shows the 
 inability of the ''masters of the world " to comprehend and 
 to abridge the crisis. Individuals are only powerful at the 
 present day, so far as they are the exponents of the condi- 
 tion and collective aspirations of large bodies of men. For 
 sixty years Europe has been convulsed by a series of 
 political struggles which have assumed all aspects by turns ; 
 which have raised every conceivable flag, from that of pure 
 despotism to that of anarchy ; from the organisation of the
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITIO A 7 . 265 
 
 bourgeoise in France and elsewhere as the dominant caste, 
 to the jacqueries of the peasants of Gallicia. Thirty revolu- 
 tions have taken place. Two or three royal dynasties have 
 been engulfed in the abyss of popular fury. Nations have 
 risen, like Greece, from the tomb where they had been for 
 ages buried; others, like Poland, have been erased from the 
 map. Forgotten, almost unknown race^, the Sclavonian 
 race, the Roumaine race, silent until now, have disinterred 
 their traditionary titles, and demanded to be represented in 
 the Congress of Nations. Kings and Queens have gone to 
 die in exile. The Austrian Empire, the China of Europe, 
 has been on the brink of destruction. A Pope, drawn 
 along by the popular current, has been obliged to bless a 
 national insurrection, and then to fly in disguise from the 
 capital of the Christian world. Vienna has twice been 
 covered with barricades. Rome has seen the republican 
 banner float above the Vatican. Governments, attacked 
 and overthrown, have ten or twenty times recovered strength, 
 drawn closer their alliances, overrun the half of Europe with 
 their armies, annihilated revolutions, effaced entire genera- 
 tions of revolutionary spirits by the sword, the scaffold, 
 exile, or imprisonment, and crushed, as they term it, the 
 hydra of disorder and anarchy. The heads of the hydra 
 have sprung up again fifty for one ; the struggle has recom- 
 menced at the foot of the scaffold of those who initiated it ; 
 the idea has gained strength beneath the hammer on the 
 anvil ; we are now, three years after an European restora- 
 tion, three months after the triumph of order in France, 
 calculating upon and arming for new struggles ; and we are 
 told that all this is the work of a few individuals, trans- 
 mitting from one to another, every ten years, the inheritance 
 of a subversive idea ! As well might the conquest of the 
 world by Christianity be attributed to the underground
 
 2 66 MAZ7JNI. 
 
 labour of a secret society. Christian truth emerged from 
 the catacombs, because the whole world was thirsting for it. 
 The ancient unity was broken ; a new one was necessary. 
 Between these two unities chaos reigned, in which humanity 
 cannot live. It reigns now, because amidst the ruins of an 
 unity in which mankind no longer has faith, a new unity is 
 being elaborated. If a few men have power with the multi- 
 tudes, it is because these men embody this unity in them- 
 selves better than others do. And though you may destroy 
 them to-day, others will replace them to-morrow. 
 
 Europe no longer possesses unity of faith, of mission, or 
 of aim. Such unity is a necessity in the world. Here, then, 
 is the secret of the crisis. It is the duty of every one to 
 examine and analyse calmly and carefully the probable 
 elements of this new unity. But those who persist in per- 
 petuating, by violence or by Jesuitical compromise, the 
 external observance of the old unity, only perpetuate the 
 crisis, and render its issue more violent. 
 
 Europe — I might say the world, for Europe is the lever 
 of the world — no longer believes in the sanctity of royal 
 races ; she may still accept them here and there as a 
 guarantee of stability, as a defence against the encroach- 
 ments of some other dangerous element ; but she no longer 
 believes in the principle, in any special virtue residing 
 in them, in a divine right consecrating and protecting them. 
 Wherever they reign despotically, she conspires against 
 them ; wherever liberty exists under their sway, in however 
 small a degree, she supports them under a brevet of im- 
 potence. She has invented the political axiom, " Kings 
 reign without governing ; " wherever they govern, and 
 govern badly, she overthrows them. 
 
 Europe no longer believes in aristocracy, the royalty of 
 several ; she no longer believes in the inevitable physical
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 267 
 
 transmission, in the perpetual inheritance of virtue, intelli- 
 gence, and honour : she believes in it no longer, either 
 scientifically or practically. Wherever an aristocracy acts 
 well — if that ever happens to be the case — she follows its 
 lead ; not as an aristocracy, but as a doer of good : 
 -wherever it drags itself along in the pride of its old 
 traditions — idle, ignorant, and decayed — she rids herself of 
 it; she destroys it, either by revolutions or by ridicule. 
 The carnival on the Continent looks to the historical order 
 of patricians for its masks. 
 
 Europe no longer believes in the Papacy ; she no longer 
 believes that it possesses the right, mission, or capacity of 
 spiritual education or guidance ; she no longer believes in 
 the immediate revelation, in the direct transmission of the 
 designs and laws of Providence, by virtue of election, to 
 any individual whatsoever ; five years ago she was seized 
 with enthusiasm fur a Pope who seemed disposed to bless 
 the progress of the human race, and to constitute himself 
 the representative of the most advanced ideas of his age ; 
 she despised him as soon as he retraced his steps and 
 recommenced the brutal career of his predecessors. 
 
 Europe no longer believes in privilege, be it what it 
 may ; except in that which no one can destroy, because it 
 comes from God— the privilege of genius and virtue ; she 
 desires wealth, but she despises or hates it in the persons of 
 those who possess it, when it is not the price of labour, or 
 when it arrogates to itself rights of political monopoly. 
 
 Now look at the actual organisation of Europe — is it not 
 altogether based upon privilege, by whatever name it may 
 be known ? How, then, can one wonder at the struggle 
 which is engendered within it ? 
 
 Let it, then, be openly declared by every honest man, 
 that this struggle is sacred ; sacred as liberty, sacred as the
 
 268 MAZZINI. 
 
 human soul. It is the struggle which has had for its 
 symbol, since the commencement of the historical world, 
 the grand type of Prometheus ; which has had for its altar, 
 during the march of the human race, the cross of Jesus ; 
 which has had for its apostles almost all the men of genius, 
 the thousand pillars of humanity. This war-cry which rises 
 from the ranks of the Proletaire is the cry of our fathers, 
 the Hussites : The cnp for all, the aip for all ! It is the 
 logical consequence of the doctrine common to us all, the 
 unity of God, and, therefore, of the human race. It is an 
 effort to realise the prayer of Christ : Thy will be done on 
 earth as it is in heaven ! Yesterday we reverenced the 
 priest, the lord, the soldier, the master ; to-day we reverence 
 Man, his liberty, his dignity, his immortality, his labour, 
 his progressive tendency ; all that constitutes him a creature 
 made in the image of God — not his colour, his birth, his 
 fortune — all that is accidental and transitory in him. We 
 believe that every man ought to be a temple of the living 
 God; that the altar upon which he ouj^ht to sacrifice to God 
 is the earth, his field of trial and of labour ; that the incense 
 of his sacrifice is the task accomplished by him ; that 
 his prayer is love ; his power, love realised — Association. 
 We believe no more in that narrow dualism which has 
 established an absurd antagonism between heaven and 
 earth, between God and his creation. We believe that the 
 earth is a stepping-stone towards heaven ; that it represents 
 a line in the immense poem of the universe ; a note in the 
 everlasting harmony of the Divine idea ; and that on the 
 accordance of our works with this harmony must depend 
 the elevation of our actual being and our hope of progress 
 in that transformation of life which we call death. We 
 believe in the sacredness of individual conscience ; in 
 the right of every man to the utmost self-development
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 269 
 
 compatible with the equal right of his fellows; and hence we 
 hold that whatever denies or shackles liberty is impious, and 
 ought to be overthrown, and as soon as possible destroyed. 
 This it is which is at the bottom of the ever-recurring 
 struggle in Europe ; this it is which prevents either armies, 
 or persecutions, or coups-d'etat from conquering it ; this it is 
 which will insure final triumph. 
 
 Now, if fatal errors, vain or absurd desires, false and 
 immoral systems, have gathered around this idea, is it a 
 reason for denying — not the errors, the immoderate desires, 
 the systems — but the idea itself? Is the religious idea an 
 impious thing because heresies have been engrafted upon 
 it? Shall we deny God because the Father of all has been 
 transformed by the monk of the Inquisition into a universal 
 tyrant ? Shall the errors of sceptics make us renounce the 
 inviolable rights or the power of human reason ? 
 
 Such reactions take place only in weak and cowardly 
 natures — for I do not address here men who choose their 
 part through interested and selfish motives. I repeat that 
 it is the duty of every honest and sincere man to study with 
 impartiality the true causes of this prolonged crisis which 
 convulses two-thirds of the populations of Europe ; to range 
 himself openly on the side of justice ; to combat with the 
 same energy enemies and false friends, — atheists and 
 heretics, — those who deny the right of progress, and those 
 who falsify and exaggerate it. A faction must not be 
 allowed to substitute itself for Humanity ; but we must not* 
 on the other hand, allow ourselves, through intolerance or 
 fear, to treat Humanity as a faction. 
 
 I ask, is there one of my readers who can boldly say, 
 "What you have just declared to be the final object of the 
 European agitation is evil ; I recoil from it ? " No ! 
 Discussion may arise upon the means selected for its
 
 270 MAZZINI. 
 
 realisation, upon the time, more or less near, of success ; 
 not upon the essence, upon the thing, upon the idea itself. 
 
 But around this holy aspiration towards the emancipation 
 of oppressed classes and peoples, around this great social 
 thought which ferments in all men's minds, there has arisen 
 such an uproar of discordant and irritated voices ; such a 
 jumbling together of petty systems, of fragmentary con- 
 ceptions, representing in reality nothing but individualities 
 excited by vanity and morbid exaltation ; that the aspiration 
 itself, the primitive thought, has become obscure to our 
 eyes. We have mistaken the glare of meteors for the true 
 and steadfast light ; we have forgotten what is principal in 
 what is accidental and accessory; we have turned from 
 eternal Truth for the possible realities of a day. 
 
 To some the poniarding of Rossi has appeared to be the 
 programme of the Italian revolution ; while others believe 
 that the French revolution and the abolition of all individual 
 property are synonymous. These men forget one thing — 
 the revolution itself; that of 1848, which confiscated 
 nothing, which abolished no right; that of Rome in 1849, 
 which slaughtered none but the foreign soldiers upon its 
 walls. In what we have just indicated there is much more 
 than a simple, an accidental contrast — there is the indica- 
 tion of a constant fact, of which those who seek in good 
 faith to appreciate the crisis should never lose sight ; the 
 radical and habitual difference between the language of 
 parties and their acts ; between the excited, exaggerated 
 ebullitions of intelligence seeking to progress and brutally 
 repulsed by force, — and its practice, its point of view when 
 it descends into the arena of action. Proudhon himself, if 
 in power, would not organise anarchy. There is hardly an 
 intelligent Communist who, on the morrow of a revolution, 
 would take for his programme the ideal which he had
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 271 
 
 preached before ; there is not one of the preachers of 
 systematic terrorism, who, invested with power, would not 
 recoil from the application of the rules which he had pro- 
 mulgated in defeat. This is in the nature of things. 
 Besides the change which takes place in the same men in 
 different positions ; besides the difference between the 
 unrestrained impulses of the writer or the propagandist 
 orator, and the course, regulated by all external circum- 
 stances, of the legislator or the representative, — there is the 
 fact, that the work of preparation falls mostly into the hands 
 of factions, whilst the practical solution of the crisis belongs 
 to the mass, to the majority of the country. Now the 
 mass, the majority, never desires the impossible. It 
 instinctively feels that it is called upon to continue, not to 
 create Humanity. It takes tradition as its starting point ; 
 it advances, but does not break the chain ; it is bound by 
 too many habits and affections to the past. If you had fifty 
 revolutions in Europe, not one would essay to establish 
 Communism or terror as a system. Those whom the 
 reading of a pamphlet or an article of a paper inspires with 
 alarm for property or for any other historical element of 
 society, are the aifans niais, as the writers themselves are 
 the enfans terribles, of our times. 
 
 This view is confirmed by facts. The republicans, who 
 under the reign of Louis Philippe had organised themselves 
 into The Society of the Eights of Matt, affectedly designated 
 their different sections by the names of Robespierre and 
 Marat. The victorious republicans in 1848 commenced by 
 abolishing capital punishment for political offences : pro- 
 perty was respected, and all the acts of the triumphant 
 party were characterised by moderation. The Italian 
 revolutions followed the same course. The powers which 
 issued from insurrection in Hungary, at Vienna, throughout
 
 272 MAZZINI. 
 
 Europe, may have committed errors ; they never sullied 
 their career with spoliation or with blood. 
 
 But besides this puerile fear, which shuts its eyes to the 
 approaching dawn, because of the fearful phantoms which 
 the night evokes, there exists a general prejudice, alluded 
 to some pages back, which radically vitiates the judgments 
 brought to bear upon the European crisis. The error con- 
 sists in this, that in seeking an insight into the issue of the 
 crisis, and the tendencies which will govern its latest stage, 
 attention is directed exclusively to France. Some seventy 
 years ago we used to judge all republican ideas by our 
 historical recollections of Sparta and Athens ; now we 
 judge all that is called liberty, equality, or association by 
 the meaning given, or thought to be given, to these words 
 in France. From continually fixing our eyes upon Paris, 
 we are no longer capable of seeing or comprehending the 
 rest of Europe — of Europe gifted with an individual life, 
 with an individual organism, of which Paris is only one 
 amongst many centres of activity. 
 
 This arises from an idea which I believe to be false, and 
 which, consciously or unconsciously, prevails everywhere — 
 namely, that the initiative of the continental European 
 movement belongs to France. 
 
 In reality this initiative is no longer hers. A powerful 
 influence is naturally and inevitably exercised by a nation 
 of thirty-five millions of men, placed in a central position, 
 endowed with warlike habits ; compact, centralised, and the 
 most decidedly One amongst European nations. But the 
 initiative of ideas, the moral and intellectual initiative — that 
 which adds a new element to the powers of civilisation, or 
 changes the general point or view of the labours of 
 Humanity — the initiative exercised by the discovery of the 
 New World, by the invention of the Press, by that of gun-
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 273 
 
 powder, or by the application of steam — the political initia- 
 tive which leads to a social transformation, to the emancipa- 
 tion of an enslaved class, to the study of a new form of 
 organisation — has never been appropriated by any single 
 nation — by France less than by any other. Like the flaming 
 torches, the lampada vita, which were passed from hand to 
 hand, in the sacerdotal ceremonies of ancient Rome, this 
 initiative has passed from one nation to another, consecrat- 
 ing each and all missionaries and prophets of Humanity. 
 Were they not all destined hereafter to become brothers, 
 fellow-labourers, equals : each according to his especial capa- 
 bilities, in the great common workshop of Humanity, towards 
 a common end — collective perfectionment, the discovery and 
 progressive application of the law of life ? Thus the idea of 
 the divine Omnipotence sprang from the old eastern world ; 
 human individuality from the pagan Greco-Roman world, 
 and more lately from the forests of old Germany ; the idea 
 of the equality of souls from the doctrine preached at Jeru- 
 salem ; the idea of the democratic constitution of the City 
 from the Tuscan and Lombard republics ; of commercial 
 association from Bremen and the Hanseatic Towns ; the 
 colonising idea from England ; the sacredness of human 
 conscience from Germany; the preconsciousness of the 
 unity of Europe, and of the world, twice from Rome ; Art 
 from Greece and Italy ; Philosophy from all. If there is 
 anything in this sunlike movement of the human mind 
 which especially characterises France, it is not the initiative, 
 it is rather the popularisation of ideas. French intelligence 
 creates little ; it assimilates much. It is essentially con- 
 structive ; the raw material comes to it from elsewhere. 
 Supple, pliant, active, full of self-confidence, instinctively 
 monopolising, and aided by a language clear, facile, and 
 fitted for all conversational requisites, — the French mind 
 
 353
 
 274 MAZZINI. 
 
 seizes upon ideas already put forth, but too often neglected 
 elsewhere ; it fashions, ornaments, appropriates them, and 
 throws them into circulation ; often facilitating that circula- 
 tion by parcelling out the idea, by dividing it into fragments, 
 as we multiply our small coinage for the benefit of the 
 greater number. Its life, its utility, is there ; and it fulfils 
 this special function, which would seem to have been 
 assigned to it, with an aplomb de malt re and a confidence 
 which insure success. 
 
 11 prend son Hen oil il le trouve; refashions and deals 
 with it as it only knows how, and so well that other nations 
 often unconsciously receive from it in exchange that which 
 they themselves had originated. It is not the less true, how- 
 ever, that the power of initiation, of spontaneous creation, 
 which gives a new impulse to the human mind when it seems 
 exhausted, is not (exceptions apart) the innate faculty of the 
 French nation. She called herself, in the first period of her 
 history, the arm of the Church; she has often been since the 
 tongue of the Thought of others. Without her, perhaps, 
 this thought would have long remained silent and sterile. 
 
 It is from the great Revolution of 1789 that we may date 
 this prejudice in favour of France, whom the Peace of 
 Utrecht bad robbed of all preponderance. The bold 
 defiance which, in the name of a great human truth, she 
 then flung to the powers that were; the gigantic efforts by 
 which she maintained it against the coalesced governments 
 of old Europe, followed by the military glories of the 
 Empire, are still working on the imagination of Europe. 
 We all worship the echo, as well as the fact, of power ; and 
 the remembrance of the great battles which led the French 
 eagle from Paris to Rome, from the Escurial to the Kremlin, 
 fascinates us as the image of a power which cannot die. 
 The French Revolution has been regarded by all, historians
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 275 
 
 and reader;;, as an European programme ; as the commence 
 ment of an era ; and as a consequence of this conception 
 we assign a series of succeeding initiatives to the people 
 who gave the first. Every idea originating in France 
 appears to us fatally destined to make the tour of Europe. 
 
 This conception is, in my opinion, erroneous. What I 
 say is grave indeed; for, if correct, it must change entirely 
 the point of view from which to appreciate the events of 
 this century. Differing in this respect from all writers on 
 the Revolution, it would be necessary for me to develop my 
 ideas at greater length than my present space permits. I 
 could not, however, in writing upon present European 
 tendencies, avoid expressing a conviction which would 
 completely modify, supposing it to be sound, the judgment 
 passed upon these tendencies and their future. I must ask 
 my readers to supply this deficiency by a fresh study of that 
 revolutionary period, in the hope that I may find an oppor- 
 tunity, perhaps in examining the recent histories of the 
 French Revolution, to bring forward my proofs. 
 
 The great French Revolution was not, philosophically 
 speaking, a. programme; it has a resume. It did not initiate, 
 it closed an epoch. It did not come to bestow a new idea 
 upon the world ; to discover the unknown quantity of the 
 problem of a new era ; it came to place upon a practical 
 ground, in the sphere of the political organisation of society, 
 a formula comprehending all the conquests of twenty-four 
 centuries, all the great ideas morally elaborated by two 
 historical worlds — the Pagan and the Christian — of which, 
 if I may allow myself the expression, it has summed up 
 the balance. It took from the Pagan world its declaration 
 of liberty, of the sovereign Ego; from the Christian world 
 its declaration of equality ; that is to say, of liberty for all 
 as the logical consequence of the unity of nature in the
 
 276 MAZZINL 
 
 human race; hence also it derived its motto of fraternity, 
 the consequence of the Christian formula, all men are the 
 sons of God; and it proclaimed — and herein consists its 
 merit towards Europe — that all this ought to be realised 
 here below. Further than this it did not go. As in every 
 great summing up of the progress of the past we 
 can detect the germ of that of the future, the Revolu- 
 tion was marked by many aspirations towards the idea of 
 association, of a common aim, of a collective solidarity, of 
 a religious transformation, — the dominating idea of the 
 present time, — but in its official acts, in the ensemble of its 
 march ; in its most characteristic manifestations, it has 
 never gone beyond the point of progress already (intel- 
 lectually) reached, the emancipation of individuality. This 
 is why, after having embodied its idea in a Declaration of 
 the Rights of man, of the individual, it was only capable of 
 ending in a man — in Napoleon. Right, that is to say, the 
 individual asserting himself, was its life, its soul, its strength. 
 Ditty, that is to say, the individual submitting himself to the 
 idea of a collective aim to be attained, never was its direct- 
 ing thought. That thought was the obligation, the necessity 
 of fighting for the conquest of the rights of each ; it made, 
 so to speak, duty subservient to rights. It never rose in 
 action to the height of putting forward a Declaration of 
 Principles. Its definition of Life has always been — whatever 
 efforts have been made to prove that it went beyond it — the 
 materialist definition — the right to physical well-being. It is so 
 even now. And Europe is now agitated and unconsciously 
 led by the other eminently religious definition of life as a 
 mission ; a series of duties, of sacrifices to be accomplished 
 for others, in view of an ulterior moral progress. 
 
 France has, by her Revolution, borne witness in the civil 
 world to the truths taught in the moral world by Christianity.
 
 EUROPE .' ITS CONDITION. 277 
 
 She has also said : Behold the man : Ecce homo. She has 
 laid down the principle of human individuality in the 
 plenitude of its liberty in face of her enemies ; and she has 
 overthrown them all. She has done, politically, the work 
 of Luther ; herein is her glory and her strength. But she 
 has not given to mankind the Word of the future, the aim of 
 the individual upon earth ; she has not indicated the work 
 to be accomplished, of which liberty is only a necessary 
 premiss — the new definition of Life which is to be the 
 starting-point of an epoch. Her great formula, which the 
 imitative mind of democracy has rendered European — 
 , liberty, equality fraternity— is only an historical formula, 
 indicating the stages of progress already attained by the 
 human mind. Now, every philosophical and social formula 
 ought — if it pretend to give a new initiative to the nations 
 ■ — to contain an indication of the Law to be followed and 
 of its necessary interpreter. The formula which the Italian 
 Revolution inscribed upon the republican banner at Rome 
 and Venice, God and the People, is more advanced and 
 more complete than that of the French republicans. 
 
 Since 181 5 there has been a great want in Europe — the 
 initiative has disappeared; it belongs to no country at the pre- 
 sent time, to France less than to any other. Europe is in search 
 of it ; no one knows yet by which people it will be seized. 
 
 We must not, then — and this is the practical result which 
 I am desirous of reaching — judge of the agitation, the as- 
 pirations, the tendencies of Europe, by France. France 
 does not lead ; she is only a member of the European 
 commonwealth ; simply one link in the chain. 
 
 There are in Europe two great questions ; or, rather, the 
 question of the transformation of authority, that is to say, of 
 the Revolution, has assumed two forms 3 the question which 
 all have agreed to call social, and the question of nationalities.
 
 278 MAZZINL 
 
 The first is more exclusively agitated in France, the second 
 in the heart of the other peoples of Europe. I say, which 
 all have agreed to call social, because, generally speaking, 
 every great revolution is so far social, that it cannot be 
 accomplished either in the religious, political, or any other 
 sphere, without affecting social relations, the sources and the 
 distribution of wealth ; but that which is only a secondary 
 consequence in political revolutions is now the cause and 
 the banner of the movement in France. The question 
 there is now, above all, to establish better relations between 
 labour and capital, between production and consumption, 
 between the workman and the employer. 
 
 It is probable that the European initiative, that which 
 will give a new impulse to intelligence and to events, will 
 spring from the question of nationalities. The social 
 question may, in effect, although with difficulty, be partly 
 resolved by a single people ; it is an internal question for 
 each, and the French Republicans of 1848 so understood 
 it, when, determinately abandoning the European initiative, 
 they placed Lamartine's manifesto by the side of their 
 aspirations towards the organisation of labour. The 
 question of nationality can only be resolved by destroying 
 the treaties of 181 5, and changing the map of Europe and 
 its public Law. The question of Nationalities, rightly 
 understood, is the Alliance of the Peoples ; the balance of 
 powers based upon new foundations ; the organisation of 
 the work that Europe has to accomplish. 
 
 We should be wrong, however, to separate the two 
 questions ; they are indissolubly connected. The men who 
 plead the cause of the Nationalities well know that revolu- 
 tions, necessarily supporting themselves on the masses, 
 ought to satisfy their legitimate wants ; they know that a re- 
 volution is sacred whenever it has for its object the progress
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 279 
 
 of the millions; but that it is an unpardonable crime 
 when it has only for its object the interest of a minority, of 
 a caste, or of a monopoly; they know that the problem 
 now to be resolved is, the association of all the faculties and 
 all the forces of humanity towards a common end, and that 
 no movement can at the present time be simply political. 
 
 By dividing into fractions that which is in reality but one 
 thing ; by separating the social from the political question, 
 a numerous section of French socialists has powerfully 
 contributed to bring about the present shameful position of 
 affairs in France. The great social idea now prevailing in 
 Europe may be thus defined : the abolition of the prole- 
 tariat ; the emancipation of producers from the tyranny of 
 capital concentrated in a small number of hands ; re-division 
 of productions, or of the value arising from productions, in 
 proportion to the work performed ; the moral and intellec- 
 tual education of the operative; voluntary association 
 between workmen substituted, gradually and peacefully, for 
 individual labour paid at the will of the capitalist. This 
 sums up all the reasonable aspirations of the present time. 
 It is not a question of destroying, abolishing, or violently 
 transferring wealth from one class to another; it is a 
 question of extending the circle of consumers; of conse- 
 quently augmenting production ; of giving a larger share to 
 producers ; of opening a wide road to the operative for the 
 acquisition of wealth and property; in short, of putting 
 capital and the instruments of labour within reach of every 
 man offering a guarantee of good-will, capacity, and 
 morality. These ideas are just ; and they are destined 
 eventually to triumph; historically, the time is ripe for their 
 realisation. To the emancipation of the slave has suc- 
 ceeded that of the serf; that of the serf must be followed 
 by that of the workman. In the course of human progress
 
 28e> MAZZINL 
 
 the patriciate has undermined the despotic privilege of 
 royalty; the bourgeoisie, the financial aristocracy, has 
 undermined the privilege of birth; and now the people, 
 the workers, will undermine the privilege of the pro- 
 prietary and moneyed bourgeoisie; until society, founded 
 upon labour, shall recognise no other privilege than that of 
 virtuous intelligence, presiding, through the choice of the 
 people enlightened by education, over the full development 
 of its faculties and its social capabilities. 
 
 These ideas, we repeat, are not exclusively French ; they 
 are European. They are the result of the philosophy of 
 history, of which the seeds sown by the Italian Vico 
 have been cultivated more particularly by the German 
 philosophers. From the moment that the human race 
 was regarded not only as an assemblage of individuals 
 placed in juxtaposition, but as a collective Whole, liv 
 ing a providentially progressive life, and realising an 
 educational plan which constitutes its laws ; — the series of 
 terms composing the civilising progression of which we 
 spoke a little while ago, was sufficient, by showing the con- 
 quests of the past, to point out the necessary progress of 
 the future. The belief in the unity of the human race, and 
 in progress, considered not as an accidental fact, but as a 
 law, would naturally beget modern democracy ; belief in 
 the collective life of society would lead to the idea of 
 association, which colours all the efforts of modern re- 
 formers. The failure of ten revolutions lost by the 
 bourgeoisie did the rest. It was evident that nothing 
 now succeeds if not supported by the masses ; and this 
 support is only to be obtained by working openly for them ; 
 by giving them an interest in the triumph of the revolution- 
 ary idea. Upon the practical ground, the existence of stand- 
 ing armies, sold body and soul to absolutism, has materially
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 281 
 
 assisted in enlarging political programmes, and in impress- 
 ing them with a popular and social tendency. It was 
 necessary to find a power to oppose to this mute and blind 
 force, which crushed ideas under the heavy tread of 
 battalions in rank and file : where could it be found if not 
 in the people? The men of the party of progress 
 addressed themselves to them ; some through faith, others 
 through policy, through necessity; all learned to know 
 them, to feel for what they were ripe, by seeing them in 
 action. Action is the thought of the people, as thought is 
 the action of the individual. It was a sudden revelation 
 confirming all the presentiments of science, all the aspira- 
 tions of faith. Justice and duty call upon us to proclaim 
 aloud that upon the barricades as in their passive resist- 
 ance, after the victory as during the struggle, wherever 
 they were not momentarily led astray by ambitious or 
 mistaken men, the people acted bravely and nobly. The 
 blouse of the workman covered treasures of devotion, of 
 generosity, of patience, suspected by none. At Paris, at 
 Milan, at Rome, at Venice, in Sicily, in Hungary, at 
 Vienna, in Poland, everywhere, the populations gave the 
 lie, by their conduct, to the terrors excited by what was 
 called the unchained lion. There was neither massacre, 
 pillage, nor anarchy. Before the signs of a great idea, at 
 the sound of the words Fatherland, Liberty, Independence, 
 the cry of misery itself was silent. Sublime words were 
 spoken, as by the Paris workmen, when they said, " We can 
 endure four months of hunger for the republic." There 
 were sublime acts, as the pardon granted by the people of 
 Milan to Bolza, the man who had been their persecutor 
 for twenty-five years, " because to pardon was a sacred 
 thing." The women of the Transtevere at Rome, lodged 
 by the Government, during the bombardment, in the
 
 282 MAZZINI. 
 
 palaces of the exiled nobles, upon their simple promise, in 
 the name of "God and the people," that they would 
 commit neither theft nor injury, religiously kept their word. 
 The people of Berlin took no other revenge for the four 
 hundred and twenty-one victims who had fallen under the 
 troops, on the 18th of March 1848, than that of burning, 
 without taking a single article, the furniture of two traitors, 
 Preuss and Wernicke. Men like Victor Hugo and 
 Lamartine, who had never been included in the r.anks of 
 democracy, were converted by the combatants of Paris. 
 Even Pope Pius IX. himself was for a moment fascinated. 
 
 Principles and facts, theory and practice, thus united to 
 prove to the men who believe in progress and are willing to 
 act for it, that the object of their efforts ought to be, and 
 can be without difficulty at the present time, the People in 
 its totality, irrespective of propertied or privileged classes. 
 And as it is impossible to dream of the moral and 
 intellectual progress of the people without providing for its 
 physical amelioration — as it is absurd to say, "Instruct 
 yourself" to a man who is working for his daily bread from 
 fourteen to sixteen hours a-day, or to tell him to love who 
 sees nothing around him but the cold calculations of the 
 speculator and the tyranny of the capitalist legislator — the 
 social question was found inevitably grafted upon the 
 question of political progress. Henceforward they could be 
 only separated by destroying both. 
 
 In Italy, in Hungary, in the states composing the empire 
 of Austria, in Poland, in Germany, the social question 
 presents nothing of a threatening, subversive, or anarchical 
 nature. There is no hostile, profoundly reactionary senti- 
 ment between class and class ; no exaggerated abnormal 
 . development of concentrated industry ; no agglomerated 
 misery rendering urgent the instant application of the
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 283 
 
 remedy ; no reckless putting forth of systems and solutions. 
 Communism has made proselytes amongst the workmen of 
 Germany ; but this ebullition, produced by a thoughtless 
 reaction against the weakness of the revolutionary direction 
 in 1848, is not of serious moment; with the exception of 
 Marx, who was desirous of being the chief of a school at 
 any price, there is not a single man of any intelligence who 
 has given in to the notion that Communism can be estab- 
 lished by enactment. Generally, the men who are destined 
 to have an influence upon events believe that association 
 must be voluntary ; that it is the duty of Government 
 to encourage, but not to impose it. The chief exceptions 
 arc found in France. There, the question which with the 
 other peoples is secondary, and rather the means than the 
 end, has acquired a preponderating importance and peculiar 
 characteristics. The special condition of existing interests ; 
 the existence of large manufacturing centres ; the shame- 
 lessness with which the bourgeoisie has confiscated to its 
 own advantage two revolutions made by the people ; the 
 absence of the question of national unity, — so absorbing for 
 the other nations, and already irrevocably conquered in 
 France, — the enthusiasm, to a certain extent factitious and 
 transient, with which the French mind seizes upon every 
 novelty, have all contributed in that country to give to the 
 social idea a character of exclusiveness and exaggeration 
 which it is unlikely to assume elsewhere. 
 
 French Socialism has forcibly stirred men's minds; it 
 has raised up a number of problems of detail of which there 
 was no suspicion before, and of which the solution will have 
 a certain importance in the future ; it has — and this is 
 a positive benefit — excited a searching European inquiry 
 into the condition of the working classes ; it has uncovered 
 the hidden sores of the system founded upon the spirit of caste
 
 284 MAZZINI. 
 
 and monopoly; it has incited the bourgeoisie to a reaction 
 so ferocious and absurd, that its condemnation, as a govern- 
 ing caste, is consequently assured at no distant period. 
 But it has falsified and endangered the great social 
 European idea, raised up innumerable obstacles to its 
 progress, and aroused against it furious enemies, where 
 it ought naturally to have found friends — in the small 
 bourgeoisie ; it has kept numbers of intelligent men from 
 entertaining the urgent question of liberty ; it has divided, 
 broken up into fractions, the camp of democracy, for which, 
 if united, an ample field of conquests, already morally won, 
 was assured. The French socialists deny this ; but for 
 every impartial mind the state into which France has fallen 
 must be an argument which admits of no reply. 
 
 France is still profoundly materialist; not in the 
 aspirations of her people whenever they are collectively 
 manifested, but in the majority of her intellectual men, her 
 writers, her statesmen, her political agitators. She is so 
 almost in spite of herself, often even without knowing it, 
 and believing herself to be the contrary. She talks of God 
 without feeling Him ; of Jesus while dressing Flim up 
 in the garb of Bentham ; of immortality while confining it 
 to the earth ; of European solidarity while making Paris 
 the brain of the world. The philosophy of the eighteenth 
 century still possesses her. She has changed her phrase- 
 ology, but the thing, the parent idea, remains. She is still 
 commenting, under one disguise or another, on the dogma 
 of physical well-being, the law of happiness ; which the 
 catechism of Volney drew from Bentham. 
 
 Analysis has almost destroyed in France the conception 
 of life. The faculty of synthetical intuition, which alone 
 gives us the power of embracing the idea of Life, in its 
 unity and comprehending its law, has disappeared with the
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 285 
 
 religious sentiment ; giving place to a habit of dividing an 
 intellectual question into fractions, and of fastening by turns 
 upon one of its manifestations only ; thus taking a part for 
 the whole. Mind has become again, in some sort, 
 polytheistical. Every man is a formula, every formula a 
 mere fragment of the civilising synthesis. You have 
 mystics, materialists, eclectics ; not a single philosopher. 
 You meet with Fourierists, Communists, Proudhonians ; 
 very few French Republicans, making the Republic a 
 symbol of all progressive development. French intelligence 
 attaches itself exclusively to one face of the moral polyhed- 
 ron. Each secondary end becomes for it the great end to 
 be attained ; each remedy for a single malady, an universal 
 panacea. The school of St. Simon recognised in history 
 only critical and organic epochs ; it defamed the one and 
 lauded the other ; forgetting that every epoch is critical in 
 relation to the preceding one, organic in relation to itself 
 or to the future. Other schools establish a perpetual 
 antagonism between religion and philosophy ; without ever 
 suspecting that philosophy accepts the fall of one belief 
 only on condition of preparing the way to a new one ; and 
 that, generally, the substantial difference between religion 
 and philosophy is this, that the latter is — when scepticism 
 is not mistaken for it — the religion of the individual ; whilst 
 the former is the philosophy of the many, of collective 
 humanity. This tendency to cut up into fragments that 
 which ought to harmonise as a whole, is the radical vice of 
 French Socialism. It has torn up the banner of the future, 
 and each school, seizing upon one of the fragments, declares 
 it to be the whole. Each word of the device, liberty, 
 equality, fraternity, serves, separated from the other two, as 
 the programme for a school. Each of the two great 
 unalterable facts, the individual and society, is the soul of a
 
 286 MAZZINL 
 
 sect, to the exclusion of the other. The individual, that is 
 to say, liberty, is destroyed in the Utopia of St. Simon, in 
 the Communism of Babeuf, and in that of his successors, 
 by whatever name they call themselves. The social aim 
 disappeared in Fourierism ; it is openly denied by Proudhon. 
 It would seem that it is not given to the French to under- 
 stand that the individual and society are equally sacred and 
 indestructible, and that it is the discovery of a method of 
 reuniting and harmonising these two things which is the 
 aim of every effort of the present time. 
 
 Life is one : the individual and society are its two 
 necessary manifestations ; life considered singly, and life in 
 relation to others. Flames kindled upon a common altar, 
 they approach each other in rising, until they mingle 
 together in God. The individual and society are sacred ; 
 not only because they are two great facts, which cannot be 
 abolished, and which, consequently, we must endeavour to 
 conciliate — but because they represent the only two criteria 
 which we possess for realising our object, the truth — namely, 
 conscience and tradition. The manifestation of truth being 
 progressive, these two instruments for its discovery ought to 
 be continually transformed and perfected ; but we cannot 
 suppress them without condemning ourselves to eternal 
 darkness ; we cannot suppress or subalternise one without 
 irreparably mutilating our power. Individuality, that is to 
 say, conscience, applied alone, leads to anarchy ; society, 
 that is to say, tradition, if it be not constantly interpreted 
 and impelled upon the route of the future by the intuition 
 of conscience, begets despotism and immobility. Truth is 
 found at their point of intersection. It is forbidden, then, 
 to the individual to emancipate himself from the social 
 object which constitutes his task here below ; and forbidden 
 to society to crush or tyrannise over the individual; but
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 287 
 
 nevertheless, if we examine the basis of the French socialist 
 systems, we shall find nearly all of them defective in one or 
 other of these respects. 
 
 This system of dismembering that which is essentially 
 one has produced its effect in the actual state of things. 
 French democracy has separated itself into two camps — 
 that of politics and that of socialism. The occupants of 
 the first call themselves men of revolutionary tradition ; the 
 others, prophets, or apostles of social reform. This has 
 produced an absurd antagonism between the men who say, 
 Let the nation be free, she shall then judge between us all ; 
 and the men who, shutting themselves up in a vicious 
 circle, say, The nation cannot be free unless she adopt our 
 system — the vanity of the Utopist substituting itself for the 
 collective mind. Some sects have advocated indifference 
 to the questions of organisation of power ; pretending that 
 the social transformation could take place under any form 
 of government. Other fractions of the party have replied 
 by reacting violently against every socialist idea ; by refusing 
 the co-operation of all those who declared themselves 
 believers in any given system ; and by exaggerating to 
 themselves the danger of some exclusive views, destined to 
 disappear, submerged in the first storm of the popular 
 ocean. Others, again, fearing the exactions of the working 
 classes, led astray by the doctrines of the Utopists, have 
 desired to avoid the danger at any price, and have preached 
 to the people during three years that their best policy is 
 peace ; abstention from every manifestation, that of the 
 electoral urn excepted. The bourgeoisie, systematically 
 threatened and pointed out to the indignation of the 
 working classes as a hostile power, fell back upon the 
 status quo, fortifying itself by leaning on the Government : 
 the people reacted against it by organising itself for
 
 288 MAZZINT. 
 
 insurrection. Anarchy entered the ranks. A man, gifted 
 with a power of logic, disastrous because applied to the 
 service of a false principle, and able to dominate weak 
 minds by his incredible audacity and his clear and cutting 
 rhetoric, came to throw the light of his torch upon this 
 anarchy, and took it for his motto, with a laugh. Proudhon, 
 an anti-socialist, summed up in himself all the phases of 
 socialism. He refuted one system by another ; he killed 
 off the chief of one sect by another ; he contradicted him- 
 self ten times over. He enthroned Irony as queen of the 
 world, and proclaimed the Void. It is through this void 
 that Louis Napoleon has entered. 
 
 I have said that the first cause of this anarchical disorder 
 of French socialism is the materialism which still governs 
 the mind of the country. This is so true, that the worship 
 of material interests has become its watchword. I know 
 the exceptions, and I honour them, but they do not destroy 
 the general fact. The great and noble question of the 
 perfectibility of collective humanity, and the emancipation 
 of the classes who are excluded from educational progress 
 by the desperate struggle which they are obliged to maintain 
 for the means of material existence, has been narrowed by 
 the majority of French socialists to the proportions of a mere 
 problem of industrial organisation. That which ought only 
 to be the indispensable mea?is has become in their hands 
 the final aim. They found man mistrustful, hostile, 
 egotistical ; and they thought to soften and improve him by 
 an increase of wealth. Doubtless they have not denied the 
 religion of the soul, but they have neglected it ; and by 
 fixing, almost exclusively, the attention of the masses upon 
 their material interests, they have assisted in corrupting 
 them ; they have, instead of destroying its source, enlarged 
 the foundation of egotism, extending it from the bourgeoisie
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 289 
 
 to the people. St. Simonianism, that is to say, the school 
 which felt so strongly from the first the unity of humanity, 
 that it had made its programme a religious one, finished by 
 the worship of happiness ; by what is termed the rehabilita- 
 tion of the flesh ; by the identification of the peaceful epoch 
 of the future with the industrial one. Its disciples are, 
 nearly all of them, to be found at the present time in the 
 ranks of the existing power, whatsoever it may be. Fourier, 
 still bolder, denied morality, and gave pleasure as the 
 watchword of progress ; legitimised all human passions, and 
 materialised the soul by a degrading theory of enjoyment- 
 Communism made all men's wants the foundation of 
 society; it was ever speaking of the right to happiness; it 
 made the abolition of individual property the secret of the 
 regeneration of the world. Proudhon, endeavouring to 
 avoid the destructive character and to produce something 
 organic, placed at the summit of the social pyramid, in the 
 place of God, a bank of gratuitous credit. The worship of 
 material interests spread from the chiefs to their subalterns, 
 to the commonalty of the party ; exaggerated, intolerant, 
 vindictive, and exclusive. They continued, in the name of 
 the red republic, the dissolving, corrupting task of Louis 
 Philippe. They spoke of money, when they ought to have 
 stirred up souls in the name of the honour of France ; of 
 property to be acquired, when they ought to have spoken of 
 duty ; of hatred to the bourgeoisie, whilst military dictator- 
 ship was at their doors. They now gather the bitter fruits 
 of their error ; some of them even avow it ; others are only 
 prevented from so doing by an inexcusable vanity. 
 
 Man is not changed by whitewashing or gilding his 
 habitation; a people cannot be regenerated by teaching them 
 the worship of enjoyment ; they cannot be taught a spirit of 
 sacrifice by speaking to them of material rewards. It is the 
 
 354
 
 29 o MAZZINL 
 
 soul which creates to itself a body ; the irlea which makes 
 for itself a habitation. The Utopist may see afar from the 
 lofty hill the distant land which will give to society a virgin 
 soil, a purer air ; his duty is to point it out with a gesture 
 and a word to his brothers ; but he cannot take humanity 
 in his arms, and carry it there with a single bound ; even if 
 this were in his power, humanity would not therefore have 
 
 progressed. 
 
 Progress is the consciousness of progress. Man must 
 attain it step by step, by the sweat of his brow. The 
 transformation of the medium in which he lives only takes 
 place in proportion as he merits it ; and he can only merit 
 it by struggle ; by devoting himself and purifying himself 
 by good works and holy sorrow. He must not be taught to 
 enjoy, but rather to suffer for others ; to combat for the 
 salvation of the world. It must not be said to him, Enjoy; 
 life is the right to haziness; but rather, Work; life is a duty, 
 do good without thinking of the consequences to yourself. He 
 must not be taught, To each according to his wants, or To 
 each according to his passions, but rather, To each according 
 to his love. To invent formulae and organisations, and 
 neglect the internal man, is to desire to substitute the frame 
 for the picture. Say to men, Come, suffer; you will hunger 
 and thirst; you will, perhaps, be deceived, be betrayed, cursed; 
 but you have a great duty to accomplish : they will be deaf, 
 perhaps, for a long time, to the severe voice of virtue ; but 
 on the day that they do come to you, they will come as 
 heroes, and will be invincible. Say to them, Arise, come 
 and enjoy ; the banquet of life awaits you; overthrow those 
 who would prevent you from entering: you will make egotists 
 who would desert you at the first musket-shot, such as those 
 who, the day after having cried Vive la Republique, vote for 
 Louis Napoleon, if he but makes them tremble, or if he
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION 291 
 
 promises them to mingle a few grains of socialism with his 
 despotism. 
 
 It is the instinctive belief in these things which renders 
 the cause of the Nationalities powerful and sacred. It is 
 by this worship of the idea, of the true, of the morally 
 just, that the initiative of European progress belongs to 
 them. 
 
 It was not for a material interest that the people of 
 Vienna fought in 1848; in weakening the empire they 
 could only lose power. It was not for an increase of 
 wealth that the people of Lombardy fought in the same 
 year; the Austrian Government had endeavoured in the 
 year preceding to excite the peasants against the landed 
 proprietors, as they had done in Gallicia ; but everywhere 
 they had failed. They struggled, they still struggle, as do 
 Poland, Germany, and Hungary, for country and liberty ; for 
 a word inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world 
 that they also live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of 
 all. They speak the same language, they bear about them 
 the impress of consanguinity, they kneel beside the same 
 tombs, they glory in the same tradition ; and they demand 
 to associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign 
 domination, in order to elaborate and express their idea ; to 
 contribute their stone also to the great pyramid of history. 
 It is something moral which they are seeking ; and this 
 moral something is in fact, even politically speaking, the 
 most important question in the present state of things. It 
 is the organisation of the European task. It is no longer 
 the savage, hostile, quarrelsome nationality of two hundred 
 years ago which is invoked by these peoples. The nation- 
 ality -which Ancillon founded upon the following principle: — 
 Whichever people, by its superiority of strength, and by its 
 geographical position, can do us an injury, is our natura/
 
 2 9 2 MAZZINL 
 
 enemy ; whichever cannot do us an injury, but can by the 
 amount of its force and by its position injure our enemy ', is our 
 natural ally, — is the princely nationality of aristocracies or 
 royal races. The nationality of the peoples has not these 
 dangers ; it can only be founded by a common effort and a 
 common movement ; sympathy and alliance will be its 
 result. In principle, as in the ideas formerly laid down by 
 the men influencing every national party, nationality ought 
 only to be to humanity that which the division of labour is 
 in a workshop — the recognised symbol of association ; the 
 assertion of the individuality of a human group called by 
 its geographical position, its traditions, and its language, 
 to fulfil a special function in the European work of 
 civilisation. 
 
 The map of Europe has to be re-made. This is the key 
 to the present movement ; herein lies the initiative. Before 
 acting, the instrument for action must be organised ; before 
 building, the ground must be one's own. The social idea 
 cannot be realised under any form whatsoever before this 
 reorganisation of Europe is effected ; before the peoples are 
 free to interrogate themselves ; to express their vocation, 
 and to assure its accomplishment by an alliance capable of 
 substituting itself for the absolutist league which now reigns 
 supreme. 
 
 Take the map of Europe. Study it synthetically in its 
 geographical structure, in the great indications furnished by 
 the lines of mountains and rivers, in the symmetrical 
 arrangement of its parts. Compare the previsions of the 
 future which this examination suggests, with the existing 
 collocation of the principal races and idioms. Open the 
 page of history, and seek for the signs of vitality in the 
 different populations, resulting from the ensejnble of their 
 traditions ; listen, in short, to the cry which rises from the
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 293 
 
 conscience of these populations through their struggles and 
 their martyrs. Then observe the official governmental 
 map, such as has been sanctioned by the treaties of 181 5. 
 In the contrast between the two, you will find the definitive 
 answer to the terrors and complaints of diplomatists. Here 
 is the secret of the conspiracy which they are endeavouring 
 to destroy, and which will destroy them. Here also is the 
 secret of the future world. 
 
 It is in these thirteen or fourteen groups, now dis- 
 membered into fifty divisions, almost all weak and powerless 
 in comparison with five of them possessing an irresistibly 
 preponderating force. It is in this Germany, now divided 
 into thirty-five or thirty-six States ; a prey alternately to the 
 ambition of Prussia and Austria, and which acknowledges 
 no other divisions than those of pure Teutonic nationality 
 in the south and of Saxony in the north, united on the line 
 of the Maine. It is in this immense race, whose outposts 
 extend as far as Central Germany in Moravia, which has not 
 yet uttered its national cry to Europe, and which aspires to 
 utter it — in heroic Poland, whom we have so much admired 
 only to forget her at the moment of her downfall — in the 
 Sclavonia of the south, extending its branches along the 
 Danube, and destined to rally itself in a vast confederation, 
 probably under the initiative of Hungary — in the Roumaine 
 race, an Italian colony planted by Trajan in the lower basin 
 of the Danube, which would appear to be called upon to 
 serve as a bridge of communication between the Sclavonian 
 and the Greco-Latin races. It is in Greece, which has not 
 risen from the tomb where it lay buried for ages to become 
 a petty German viceroyalty, but to become, by extending 
 itself to Constantinople, a powerful barrier against the 
 European encroachments of Russia. It is in Spain and 
 Portugal, destined sooner or later to be united as an
 
 294 MAZZINL 
 
 Iberian peninsula. It is in the ancient land of Odin, 
 Scandinavia, of which Sweden must some day complete the 
 unity. It is, above all, in Italy, a predestined nation, which 
 cannot resolve the question of its independence without 
 overthrowing the empire and the papacy at the same time, 
 and planting upon the Capitol and the Vatican the banner 
 of the inviolability of the human soul for the whole world. 
 
 I have not space for all that I would fain say upon this 
 subject of the nationalities, of which the importance is as 
 yet unrecognised in England. I would willingly trace the 
 first lines of the study which I have suggested; I would 
 willingly apply the deductions arising from it to each of the 
 countries which I have just named, and enter into the 
 details of the movement which has, since a certain number 
 of years, acquired a practical value. This I cannot now do. 
 But I affirm with profound conviction, that this movement, 
 only just commenced in some of the groups, already far 
 advanced for the others, has attained in Italy, in Hungary, 
 in Vienna, in a great part of Germany, and in some of the 
 Sclavonian populations, a degree of importance, which must 
 at no distant period, produce decisive results. It is prob- 
 able that the initiative of these events will spring from 
 Italy; it is already ripe : but let it come from where it may, 
 it will be followed. An isolated national revolution is no 
 longer possible. The first war-cry which arises will carry 
 with it a whole zone of Europe, and through it Europe 
 herself. It will be the epopee of which 1848 has been the 
 prologue. 
 
 In the face of this crisis, which every day brings nearer 
 to us, what is England doing, and what ought she to do ? 
 
 What she is doing is this. — She goes on from day to day 
 wavering between a policy pretending to renew the alliance 
 of the smaller against the menaces of the larger States,
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 295 
 
 supporting itself upon a moderate party destitute of intelli- 
 gence, energy, or strength — a policy which has no meaning 
 when the question is between to be and not to be; and 
 another policy which shamelessly says to the country, We 
 will play the spy for the sake of the established Governments. 
 The first policy timidly hesitates between that which is and 
 that which will be; it caresses Prussia, condemned to 
 impotence between terror of Austria and of German demo- 
 cracy ; it seeks an ally against Austria in the Piedmontese 
 monarchy, twice crushed at Milan and Novarra, and 
 which would inevitably be so a third time if it ever dared to 
 defy again its enemy ; it urges the established Governments 
 to concessions ; it recoils from their logical consequences ; 
 it irritates despotism without weakening it ; it raises the 
 hopes of the populations without realising them; it must 
 meet hatred from some, incredulity from others. The 
 second policy openly retraces its steps towards absolutism. 
 Both have brought England to the abdication of herself in 
 the affairs of Europe; they are bringing her sooner or later 
 to absolute isolation. Self-abdication and isolation : is that 
 a life worthy of England ? Are nations no longer allied, as 
 individuals are, by duty ? Ought they not to do good and 
 to combat evil ? Are they not members of the great human 
 family ? Do they not share the life of all ? Ought they not 
 to communicate something of their life to all ? Can they 
 remain strangers to the common task of leading mankind 
 towards perfection, the realisation of the educational plan 
 assigned to humanity ? And have we the right of uttering 
 the name of religion, when crime is committed at our very 
 doors which we could prevent, and when we cross our arms 
 in indifference? In 1831, England proclaimed the duty of 
 non-intervention as the basis of European international 
 relationsr It was an irreligious and negative principle : we
 
 296 MAZZINI. 
 
 are all bound to intervene for good ; we ought not to be 
 able to intervene for evil. And yet this principle, coming 
 between the two opposing elements, might be intelligible as 
 a means of arriving at the true condition of the peoples and 
 their capacity of realising the progress which they invoke. 
 How has it been maintained? Wherever nations have 
 arisen to organise themselves in a manner more suitable to 
 their present belief and interest, Prussian, Austrian, or 
 French despotism has employed its brute force upon each 
 isolated people; England has not even protested upon the 
 tombs of Rome and Hungary. The menace of the 
 foreigner weighs upon the smaller States; the last sparks 
 of European liberty are extinguished under the dictatorial 
 veto of the retrograde powers. England — the country of 
 Elizabeth and Cromwell — has not a word to say in favour 
 of the principle to which she owes her existence. 
 
 If England persist in maintaining this neutral, passive, 
 selfish part, she will have to expiate it. A European trans- 
 formation is inevitable. When it shall take place, when the 
 struggle shall burst forth at twenty places at once, when the 
 old combat between fact and right is decided, the peoples 
 will remember that England has stood by, an inert, im- 
 movable, sceptical witness of their sufferings and efforts. 
 Ancient alliances being broken, the old States having disap- 
 peared, where will be the new ones for England? New 
 Europe will say to her, Live thy own life. This life will be 
 more and more restricted by the gradual inevitable emanci- 
 pation of her colonies. England will find herself some day 
 a third-rate power, and to this she is being brought by a 
 want of foresight in her statesmen. 
 
 The nation must rouse herself, and shake off the torpor 
 of her Government. She must learn that we have arrived 
 at one of those supreme moments, in which one world is
 
 EUROPE: ITS CONDITION. 297 
 
 destroyed and another is to be created ; in which, for the 
 sake of others and for her own, it is necessary to adopt a 
 new policy. 
 
 This policy is that of the Nationalities, that which will 
 protect openly and boldly their free development ; it is a 
 great and a useful policy. 
 
 There is evidently an attempt at universal restoration in 
 Europe. From Vienna it has passed to Rome ; from 
 Rome to Paris. Where will it stop ? It is now hanging 
 over Switzerland, Piedmont, and Belgium ; it tends to 
 suppress liberty, the press, the right of asylum. When 
 that shall be accomplished, when England shall be the 
 only European land upon which liberty, the press, the 
 right of asylum, still exist, do you think that an effort will 
 not be made to destroy them there ? No army, perhaps, 
 will succeed in landing upon her soil ; but is it by invasion 
 only that a country is destroyed? The Holy Alliance 
 renewed, has it not ports to close, obstructions to oppose 
 to travellers? Can it not forbid the introduction of the 
 English press, spread papal corruption, sow divisions 
 between class and class, excite revolts in the colonies. 
 England arms : she authorises rifle-clubs ; she speaks of 
 militia ; she is then in fear ; and yet she repulses the 
 most efficient means of safety that Europe offers her ; she 
 leaves the peoples who would be her nearest allies to fall 
 one by one under the attacks of la terreur blanche; she 
 renounces with a fatal obstinacy the glorious role which 
 the loss of the French initiative yields to the first nation 
 willing to seize upon it ; a role which would assure to her 
 the first influence in the Europe of the future, safety from 
 all attempts against liberty, and the consciousness of the 
 accomplishment of a duty towards the world. National 
 defences ! Her national defences against the Court of
 
 298 MAZZINI. 
 
 Rome are in Rome herself delivered from French occupa- 
 tion, that living insult to civilised Europe, which has no 
 other object now than that of holding, in contempt of 
 every right, a strategic position in Italy ; her best defence 
 against Austria is in Milan, at Venice, in Switzerland, in 
 Hungary; against Russia, in Sweden, in Poland, in the 
 Danubian Principalities ; against France, in the alliance of 
 the young nationalities which will shortly furnish her with 
 the opportunity of overthrowing that imperialism which 
 now threatens freedom everywhere, because an army is its 
 slave, with the most dangerous enterprises. 
 
 Within the last two or three months a voice has reached 
 us from across the Atlantic, saying, Evil is being done daily 
 in Europe; we 7vill not tolerate its triumph, we will no 
 longer give Cain's answer to God, who has made us free; we 
 will not allow foreign armies to suppress the aspirations 
 which we hold sacred, the ideas which may enlighten us. Let 
 every people be free to live its own life. To ?naintain this 
 liberty, we are ready to intervene by word of ?nouth — if jieed 
 be, by the sword. This cry, rising from the majority of the 
 population, and from a part of the official world in the 
 United States, is directed to England. It comes from a 
 branch of her own race. Let her accept it, and rebaptise 
 her alliance with America by a policy worthy of both. 
 There is something great in this idea of an Anglo-American 
 alliance coming from the lips of an exile. The laying of 
 the first stone of that religious temple of humanity which 
 we all foresee, is a labour well worthy the co-operation of 
 the two worlds.
 
 M. RENAN AND FRANCE/ 
 
 This bookf which, from the importance of the subject and 
 the name of the author, I opened full of desire and hope, 
 has left my mind penetrated with a sense of deep dis- 
 couragement and sorrow for France. Truly has she need 
 of moral reform ! A nation alternating between an 
 indifference which allows her inertly to contemplate the 
 dismemberment of her soil, and a vandalism which trans- 
 forms the sanctity of the republican faith into a passion of 
 hatred and vengeance, and the divine aim of life into an 
 idolatry of the senses and greed of material good — is 
 irrevocably lost, if some immense effort be not made to 
 restore her to the sphere of high thoughts, the adoration of 
 the ideal, the lost religion of duty and sacrifice, and recall 
 all her children to communion in love and works. 
 
 This grand impulse, this regenerating initiative, ought to 
 spring from France's greatest intellects ; from those 
 amongst her writers capable of comprehending the causes 
 of the evil and the remedies indicated by her national 
 tradition, if studied conjointly and harmonised with the 
 general European aspiration in regard to the epoch we 
 foresee. Such writers abound in France — where, indeed, 
 
 * The following pages may be said to be Mazzini's last public words. 
 The article was concluded on the 3rd of March 1872 ; he died on the 
 10th of that month. 
 
 + " La Rcforme Morale et Iutellectuello," par Ernest Renan.
 
 3oo MAZZINL 
 
 one of the chief evils of the day is the fact that intellect 
 has so far outstripped morality in its advance — and of 
 these, Renan, a learned and influential thinker, is among 
 the first, and we had a right to expect that a work by him 
 upon " Intellectual and Moral Reform," would contain a 
 powerful analysis of the causes which have cut short the 
 progress of France since 1815, an indication of the methods 
 by which the national organism might be awakened to new 
 life, and an earnest word to his fellow-workers in the 
 intellectual sphere, urging them to join him in a moral 
 crusade which might, perhaps, restore to France the 
 initiative power she has lost. In all of these expectations 
 have I been deceived. 
 
 Nor is this my first delusion with regard to those 
 Frenchmen to whom, whether through intellect, capacity of 
 action, reputation, or brilliant antecedents, the mission of 
 guiding their country specially belonged ; the duty of 
 urging her forward when hesitating, and of recalling her 
 into the right path when disposed to go astray. 
 
 The inertia and self-abdication of those intellectually 
 superior to the mass of their fellow-citizens was general 
 during the late upheaval, and is one of the gravest 
 symptoms of the decay I deplore. 
 
 In the sphere of action it was astounding and grievous 
 to see men like Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, Edgar Quinet, 
 Schcelcher, Arago, and many others, stand inertly by to 
 witness the insurrection of Paris, which they might, by 
 their personal intervention, have directed towards a nobler 
 aim, and hesitate — silent, uncertain, and worse than useless 
 — between an Assembly which they believed to be ruinous 
 to their country, and a movement which, abandoned to the 
 direction of incapable materialists, could only accumulate 
 disaster on disaster.
 
 M. RE NAN AND FRANCE. 301 
 
 In the sphere of thought, the best intellects of Fiance 
 remain mute in discouragement, like Quinet ; obstinately 
 persist in vaunting the initiative omnipotence and grandeur 
 of France, like Hugo ; or seek a remedy for the ills of the 
 present in a return to the past, like Renan. Not one of 
 them has the courage to declare to France what are the 
 faults and errors which have caused her fall ; none dare — 
 fearless of sect or party, but firm of faith in the future 
 — to teach her by what moral annihilation of such vain 
 idolatry of a past often glorious but more often unjust, she 
 may revive to normal and fruitful life, fraternal and 
 harmonious with the life and destiny of Europe. 
 
 Dante had this courage towards us Italians. 
 
 The habit, too prevalent everywhere, but conspicuously 
 so in France, of selecting a scapegoat in an individual or 
 group of individuals, and laying upon him or them the 
 burden of the faults or misfortunes of an entire people, is 
 fatal ; because it either leads to adulation or lulls to 
 inertia. Napoleon — his miserable parody, the nephew — 
 the superstitious reverence professed by the courtiers of 
 one Bourbon dynasty towards the past — the egotism 
 centred in the present, of Louis Philippe — all these are but 
 incidents, whether vulgar or heroic, in the history of a 
 nation ; they are not causes, but consequences. I do not 
 seek to diminish the faults of individuals, nor the tremen- 
 dous responsibility which weighs upon those who trade 
 upon the vices of a people in order to win power or riches 
 for themselves ; but the sources of the evil lie deeper, and 
 the tempter only enters where a breach is already made. 
 And when a nation which changes its rulers and its form of 
 government every fifteen or twenty years, drags its course 
 through more than two-thirds of a century, alternately 
 rising and falling, only to rise and fall again, within the
 
 302 
 
 MAZZINI. 
 
 same fated circle ; perennially aspiring towards progress, 
 yet incapable of advancing one single step upon the 
 path towards it — the mischief has penetrated into its 
 vitals. It is necessary to search it out, define it, and 
 attack it at the root, regardless of praise or blame. There 
 are no signs of any attempt to do this in France. No such 
 attempt is made among those whose eyes are fixed on 
 France in my own country, where, in spite of the brief 
 intellectual rebellion, roused by recent outrages endured, 
 the old prestige is still so dominant, that world-wide hopes 
 are kindled by every rumour of an emeute, and every wild 
 threat uttered by Paris or Lyons. 
 
 It is thirty-seven years since I first published my con- 
 viction that the character and progress of the democratic 
 movement in France and Europe were falsified and delayed 
 by two fundamental, vital errors : the opinion, rooted in all 
 Europe, and most firmly in my own country, that the 
 initiative of the movement of civilisation is the enduring 
 and quasi-inalienable heritage of France ; and the belief, 
 blindly accepted by the party of action in France, that the 
 revolution of '89 had initated a new epoch, and that the 
 actual work before us was, therefore, merely a work of 
 deduction, — of the practical application of the principles 
 which were the informing spirit of that revolution. Of the 
 first of these errors I have frequently spoken : the second 
 is the key to the actual condition of France, and this book 
 of Kenan's compels me to draw attention to it. 
 
 The political theory which dominated alike the great 
 achievements and the great legislative manifestations of 
 that revolution was, the theory of Rights ; the moral 
 doctrine which promoted and perpetuated it was, the 
 materialist doctrine which has defined life as a search after 
 happiness on earth. The first inaugurated the Sovereignty
 
 M. HE NAN AND FRANCE. 303 
 
 of the Ego : the second inaugurated the Sovereignty of 
 Interests. The few isolated gleams of light thrown upon 
 the path of the future by individuals who died prophets or 
 martyrs of other ideas and other aims are of no account in 
 the balance (no great revolution could be without such), the 
 fundamental character of the revolution was as I have 
 shortly stated it. France made it her own : she in no way 
 altered it when the violence of the agitation was succeeded 
 by despotism ; she has shown no indication of altering it 
 since her recent defeat. 
 
 The consequences — since every principle adopted, inevit- 
 ably generates a method — are obvious to all who understand 
 the logic of history. The Rights of different individuals or 
 of different orders of society, when neither sanctified by 
 sacrifice fulfilled, nor harmonised and directed by a common 
 faith in a providential moral law, will sooner or later come 
 into collision and lead to reciprocal shock ; and each re- 
 assertion of such rights will wear the aspect of war and 
 hatred. The absence of a law of duty, supreme over all 
 rights, and to which all can therefore appeal, gradually and 
 inadvertently leads men to the acceptance of les faits 
 accomplis: success is gradually taken for the sign and 
 symbol of legitimacy, and men learn to substitute the 
 worship of the actual for the worship of the true ; a dis- 
 position which is shortly after transformed into the 
 adoration of Force. Force is by degrees accepted and 
 sought after, even by those who invoke the holy names of 
 justice and truth as the principal means of their achieve- 
 ment and application. The guidance of liberty is entrusted 
 to the weapons of tyranny ; the revolution is incarnated in 
 St. Just and Robespierre ; and terror, elevated into a 
 system, assumes the title of an energetic apostolate. 
 
 When the revolution, either extinguished by a successful
 
 304 MAZZINL 
 
 soldier or by the peaceful Machiavelism of a deceitful 
 prince, is superseded by a new order of things, the nations 
 educated by such political doctrines as these, still maintain 
 them as the directing spirit of their governmental organisa- 
 tion, and translate Force into administrative centralisation 
 — the concession of the monopoly of public life to the 
 state — and the repression or neglect of every element that 
 endeavours to emerge from a condition of inertia into ono 
 of practical activity. Meanwhile the seeds of egotism are 
 insinuated into the hearts of men by the false definition of 
 life as a search after happiness ; the good impulses which, 
 in the fervour of youth or the excitement of a violent 
 general commotion, suggested golden visions of universal 
 happiness and perennial harmony between individual and 
 collective interests, are blunted in less stirring times by the 
 cold calculations dictated — in the absence of any faith to 
 prescribe duty — by age, or by the evil realities of the 
 present. 
 
 Those who have succeeded, by means of a temporary 
 fraternisation with the people, in obtaining what they 
 required, unmindful of their promises and of the pact of 
 solidarity to which they had sworn, content themselves 
 with the quiet enjoyment of their own rights, and leave the 
 people to acquire theirs in their turn, if they can, and how 
 they can. Material interests become the arbitrators of all 
 things ; riches and power are held synonymous with great- 
 ness in the mind of the nation. National policy is 
 converted into' a mere policy of distrust, jealousy, and 
 division between those who suffer and those who enjoy ; 
 those who are able to turn their liberty to profit, and those 
 who have naught of liberty but the empty name. 
 
 International policy loses sight of all rule of justice, all 
 love of righteousness, and becomes a policy of mere egotism
 
 M. RENAN AND FRANCE. 305 
 
 and aggrandisement ; at times of degradation, and at times 
 of glory bartered for at others' expense. Intelligence 
 embellishes both crimes and errors by sophism and system ; 
 teaches indifference or mute contemplation in philosophy ; 
 lust and the worship of the external in art ; stupid sub- 
 mission or savage rebellion in politics; and the substitution 
 of a problem of production for the human problem in 
 economy; or, — turning again to the past, — renounces action 
 and writes history. 
 
 The expiation follows upon the crime : more or less 
 immediate, more or less severe; but inevitable and inex- 
 orable. 
 
 The situation created for France by the adoption of the 
 theory of Rights, of Well-being as the aim of life, is as 
 follows : — The expiation which commenced in the impossi- 
 bility of breaking through the fatal circle of the present 
 and advancing towards the future, has entered into a 
 second and more decisive period, and is destined to be 
 carried still further, if those French thinkers who are 
 capable of true, manly patriotism, do not come to a mutual 
 agreement resolutely to declare the truth to their erring 
 countrymen. Such truths, when uttered by foreign lips, 
 assume an appearance of antagonism where none really 
 exists, and awaken to resistance the pride which survives 
 disaster. 
 
 Instead of separating the part of the thinkers from the 
 part of the people, as is far too often done by Renan, 
 Montegut, and others — all those men in France who, 
 whether few or many, combine capacity and influence with 
 an austere lovo of country, should unite in a periodic and 
 continuous apostolate of the truth. 
 
 That truth is — 
 
 The theory of Rights may be able to complete the 
 
 355
 
 306 MAZZINI. 
 
 destruction of a form of society either tyrannous or sinking 
 into decay ; it is incapable of founding society anew upon 
 a durable basis. The doctrine of the Sovereignty of the 
 Ego can only create despotism or anarchy. Liberty is a 
 means of reaching good ; it is not the aim. 
 
 Equality, as understood in its absolute material sense, is 
 an impossible negation of nature : were it even possible to 
 found it, it could only lead to immobility. The secret of a 
 well-organised social system cannot be discovered through 
 the medium of the suffrage, whether exercised at the will 
 of one, of a few, or of the whole people ; unless the vote is 
 based upon, starts from, and expresses their anterior 
 acceptance of some ruling moral Principle — a principle so 
 harmonising the religious and historical tradition of the 
 nation with the intuitions of individual conscience as to 
 become the informing spirit of a whole epoch, during 
 which it will be interpreted and practically applied by the 
 people. The " people " is not any fraction, however vast, 
 but the ensemble of all the individuals and all the classes 
 associated to form a nation, under the guidance of a com- 
 mon faith and a common pact, indicating a common aim ; 
 that Aim is sole sovereign. 
 
 Revolution is only sacred and legitimate when undertaken 
 in the name of a new aim upon the path of progress 
 capable of ameliorating the moral, intellectual, and material 
 condition of the whole people : revolutions undertaken in 
 order to substitute the systematic supremacy of any single 
 fraction of the people for the rest, are naught other than 
 rebellious, as dangerous as unfruitful. 
 
 Every true revolution is the substitution of a new educa- 
 tional problem for the old. True government is, the intel- 
 lect, the sense of the people, consecrated to the work of 
 carrying out that new educational principle in the sphere of
 
 M. RENAN AND FRANCE. 307 
 
 facts. Everything depends upon so organising the govern- 
 ment that it shall be alike bound to be and capable of 
 being the true interpreter of that principle, and have 
 neither the temptation nor the power to falsify it; but all 
 the theories of government founded upon distrust, suspicion, 
 resistance, liberty per se, or antagonism between the 
 governing power and the governed, as upon an organic 
 idea, are characteristic of a period of transition • a generous 
 but temporary protest against an abnormal and tyrannical 
 condition of things, but inefficacious and incapable of 
 constituting a normal and fruitful national life. 
 
 Authority is sacred when it is neither the corpse of a 
 dead authority, nor a lie assuming its name, but entrusted 
 with and able to fulfil the mission of representing and 
 developing the moral principle of the epoch ; and the 
 eternal problem of this world is — not the destruction of 
 authority, but the search after, and substitution of, a new 
 authority for such authorities as are false or extinct. 
 Nothing is destroyed, nothing is created ; but all things 
 are transformed in conformity with the stage of education 
 which we have reached or are capable of reaching. 
 
 Education, the fatherland, liberty, association, the family, 
 property, and religion — all these are undying elements of 
 human nature : they cannot be cancelled or destroyed, but 
 every epoch has alike the right and the duty of modifying 
 their development in harmony with the intellect of the age 
 the progress of science, and the altered condition of human 
 relations. Hence democracy, informed and enlightened by 
 these ideas, must abandon the path of negations ; useful 
 and opportune so long as the duty before us was that of 
 breaking asunder the chains that bound mankind to the 
 past ; useless and barren now that our task is the conquest 
 of the future. If it do not forsake this path, it can but
 
 3o8 MAZZINI. 
 
 doom itself to perish — as all mere reaction must perish— in 
 anarchy and impotence. 
 
 Life is not the search after a well-being, a happiness 
 which is impossible on earth. Life is a mission, or it has 
 neither value nor meaning. Life is not our own — it is of 
 God ; it has, therefore, an aim and a law. To discover 
 this law, to gradually ascertain this aim, and temper our 
 thoughts and actions in accordance with it, is our task. 
 The holy formula of duty must rule it from on high. Man 
 has no rights from nature, save only the one right of 
 liberating himself from every obstacle impeding his free ful- 
 filment of his own duties. All our other rights are simply 
 the consequences of our own actions : of the fulfilment of 
 our duties. Material possessions, like intellectual posses- 
 sions, are merely means of fulfilling these ; the instruments 
 by which to achieve our mission — the aim ; and they also 
 are sacred in view of that aim — by regarding them as the 
 aim of life, we may possibly succeed in transporting the 
 egotism of one class into another, but we shall never 
 annihilate egotism for the general good. 
 
 Whatsoever the law may be, whatsoever the aim assigned 
 to us, and of which clearer glimpses are revealed to us from 
 epoch to epoch, we can neither advance in the discovery of 
 the first, nor the realisation of the second, without calling 
 all the forces of humanity into play. Our intimate union 
 with our fellows is therefore a duty. Each of us lives, not 
 for himself, but for all ; and we cannot fulfil our own 
 progress apart from that of the rest. The supreme virtue 
 is sacrifice ; to think, to act, and, if need be, to suffer, not 
 for ourselves but for others — for the triumph of good over 
 evil. The conditions of the problem remain the same ; tho 
 achievement of the means of well-being for all, continues to 
 be our task either way; but the spirit and intention in
 
 M. RENAN AND FRANCE. 309 
 
 which the task is undertaken, the difference of the aim 
 which those means are intended to realise, will produce 
 different results, and educate mankind to love and virtue, 
 not to the odious egotism which is the plague of the world 
 at the present day. 
 
 Franco forgot these rules of life : she surrendered her 
 noble instincts to materialism ; her inborn love of humanity 
 to idolatry of her own power ; her adoration of the ideal to 
 an ignoble greed of enjoyment ; her aspiration towards the 
 future to a blind, vain-glorious adoration of a revolution 
 which merely concluded an epoch of the past ; her love of 
 her sister nations and her faith in their equality, to the 
 dream of a moral dominion and a monopoly of perennial 
 initiative, which is not granted to any nation. Her recent 
 misfortunes are deserved ; they are the expiation of her 
 unfulfilled promises to the peoples ; of her abandonment of 
 Poland, her invasion of Spain in 1823 ; of that class-hatred 
 which has taken the place of the sacred republican 
 apostolate among her people ; of her servile acceptance 
 of the Second Empire ; of Rome, Mexico, Nice, and the 
 late war. 
 
 Before France can redeem herself she must repudiate tho 
 last fifty-seven years, and enter upon a radically different 
 course. 
 
 II. 
 
 The frank and virile language which I had hoped to hear 
 addressed by French thinkers to their countrymen, is not 
 to be found in this work of Kenan's. In order to promote 
 the revival of France in the future, he evokes and strives 
 to recall to life the France of the past — a past concluded 
 by the revolution of 1789, and interred for ever. Kenan is
 
 3ro MAZZIN1. 
 
 a monarchist. Looking back ovor the history of France, 
 he sees that monarchy founded the territorial unity of 
 France, and from this fact, which — historically speaking — 
 he even exaggerates, he assumes that French nationality 
 ought now, as hitherto, to remain monarchial, and that the 
 error of the Revolution was the attempt to found liberty 
 while decapitating the monarch and monarchy. It is true 
 that enduring institutions can neither be created h priori 
 by imitating an ideal type suggested by the example of any 
 given people at a different epoch, nor by the solitary 
 intuition of an individual. This error, which Renan 
 attacks, and into which nearly all the modern socialists 
 have fallen, is one I have never shared. Institutions are 
 not created, they are deduced ; they are the issue of the 
 inherent tendencies and special faculties of a people ; of the 
 social organisation and customs slowly evolved among 
 them, and fitting them for some special, determinate 
 function among their fellow nations ; of that historic 
 tradition which reveals to us their law of life. But 
 although the study of the tendencies, faculties, and 
 tradition of a people may, and ought to guide us to the 
 discovery of the principle by which (until all its con- 
 sequences are exhausted) their laws and institutions should 
 be ruled and governed, it cannot determine the choice of 
 the methods best calculated to reduce that principle into 
 practical reality. The error of Renan — an error almost in- 
 comprehensible in a thinker — is precisely that of com 
 founding the principle with the methods of its application. 
 Monarchy is not a principle : it simply represents an 
 administrative method, an instrument / which in time 
 becomes worn out, and requires to be replaced and 
 superseded by another. 
 
 That which we are bound to seek from the historic
 
 M. RENAN AND FRANCE. 311 
 
 tradition of a people is the indication of its mission in the 
 world ; and to this, when discovered, we are bound to shape 
 and temper their education and their laws ; but the 
 question how and in what direction that mission shall be 
 fulfilled among the nations, is a problem varying from 
 epoch to epoch. 
 
 Rome had, more incontcstably than any other people, the 
 mission of European civilisation, the formation of tho 
 Latino-Germanic world. But that mission (which ought 
 still to constitute an element of our international policy) 
 was fulfilled by different methods ; by the sword of the 
 Republic and the Empire, during the first great Roman 
 epoch ; by the Papal word of Christian evangelisation, and 
 the colonising power and example of our communes, in the 
 second great epoch. 
 
 A principle endures throughout long ages ; until (as I 
 have before said) the whole of its vital and generative 
 power has been identified with and incarnated in humanity- 
 The instruments, or organisms employed in the service of 
 that principle, are more often changed or modified accord- 
 ing to the progressive education of the people. It is true, 
 though less absolutely true than Renan appears to believe,* 
 that monarchy — by its constant warfare with the feudal 
 lords — contributed to the formation of French national 
 unity ; as the aristocracy of England, by their opposition 
 to the despotic tendencies of the Monarchy, contributed to 
 the development of the dominant national characteristic. 
 
 * The French communes, though inferior in origin, character, scope, 
 and methods to the communes of Italy, are, nevertheless, an important 
 element in the history of Franco ; and by the uniformity of their 
 movement during tho eleventh and twelfth centuries, prepared the 
 way for national unity. Renan never alludes to them, as he never 
 alludes to the noble efforts of Stephen Marcel and Robert Lecoq in the 
 fourteenth century, nor to Joan of Arc, nor the bold demands of the
 
 3i2 MAZZINI. 
 
 It is also true that it is to tho exercise of that unifying 
 office — for its own ends — by monarchy, that much of 
 France's tendency towards political administrative central- 
 isation is due ; as well as her readiness to submit to any 
 individual crowned with the prestige of victory or dynastic 
 tradition ; her endeavours to implant liberty by violent 
 means ; her substitution of military glory for the work of 
 fraternity and affection, and her struggles after an Equality, 
 frequently misunderstood, but invariably sought after and 
 regarded as superior to eveiy other gain. And thus in 
 England, the long struggle of the patriciate against the 
 unlimited power of the king, generated a tendency towards 
 decentralisation, towards the worship of individual liberty 
 before all things, and the habitual reverence for the 
 aristocracy as an historic element of the nation.* 
 
 But, because the first stage of the education of a people 
 was directed by a certain institution, ought we to forget 
 that the subsequent stages demand other instructors 1 
 Because the historic element is important in the life of a 
 people, ought we to deny the intuition, spontaneity, and 
 
 States-General in 1641, nor to many otlier popular and bourgeoise 
 manifestations. The importance of those movements was felt by 
 Philip Augustus, Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, and the kings who 
 succeeded him ; but while availing themselves of them in order to 
 compel the submission of the feudal lords, the kings did their utmost 
 to curtail or misdirect their action. Monarchy promoted the terri- 
 torial unity of Franco : her moral unity — the soul of a nation — arose 
 there, as elsewhere, out of the instincts of the people. 
 
 * We Italians owe our national tendencies to no monarchical or 
 aristocratic element whose history is indissolubly linked with our own. 
 Such vitality as the aristocratic element had amongst us, was tho 
 vitality of great families, not of a compact and active party united by 
 a common aim. And not to monarchy, but to our people only, 
 belongs the initiative of every enterprise in aid of national unity or 
 liberty.
 
 
 M. REN AN AND FRANCE. 313 
 
 presentiment of a new future, actually existing in that 
 people 1 Because our communes were great, ought we to 
 cancel the common country, retrace our steps, and remain 
 motionless among the graves of our fathers 1 Because 
 certain manifestations of life are displayed before us, shall 
 we confound them with life itself, and, by dooming it to 
 ceaseless agitation within the fatal circle traced by those 
 past manifestations, make of the future a mosaic of 
 substances disinterred among ruins ? 
 
 Life is immortal : throughout the indefinite series of its 
 manifestations it assumes form after form, according to the 
 immediate and secondary aims which it has to reach in the 
 course of its journey towards the supreme, final aim. 
 The theory of Renan contradicts the true conception of 
 history, and denies that law of progress which is henceforth 
 the recognised and accepted consequence of the study of 
 human things, and will be the basis of the life of the epoch 
 towards which we are rapidly advancing. 
 
 The error of the French revolution was not the abolition 
 of monarchy. It was the attempt to build up a republic 
 upon the theory of Rights, which, taken alone, inevitably 
 leads t( the acceptance of les fails accomplis ; upon the 
 Sovereignty of the Ego, which leads us, sooner or later, to 
 the Sovereignty of the strongest Ego; upon the essentially 
 monarchical methods of extreme centralisation, intolerance 
 and violence — upon that false definition of life of which I 
 have spoken above, given by men educated by monarchy 
 and inspired by a materialism which, having cancelled God, 
 had left itself nothing to worship but Force. When the 
 most powerful Ego of the period — Napoleon — arose, 
 supported by Force, and said : " Bow down," the revolu- 
 tion bent before him, and (with very few exceptions) 
 all who had sworn to live and die free men, held their
 
 314 MAZZINI. 
 
 peace, and resignedly seated themselves at the desks of 
 the Institute or upon the benches of the Senat Conservaleur. 
 In this contradiction between the methods and the aim; 
 in this immoral education, by means of which monarchy 
 has led the good instincts of the French people astray, and 
 against which the highest intellects of France did not 
 contend as they ought to have done— lie the real causes of 
 the manifest impotence of France. It is but the other day 
 that the Government of the Defence dispatched the republi- 
 can, Mark Dufraisse, to declare to the Italians of Nizza — 
 " Habitants de Nice, vous appartenez desormais a la France," 
 forgetting that the original plebiscite with which France 
 gave herself to Louis Napoleon having been overthrown, 
 every subsequent Imperial plebiscite was by right over- 
 thrown also. Now, Frenchmen select as the Representative 
 of a Republic, Thiers, the Frenchman of all others most 
 imbued with the Napoleonic policy, which he is even now 
 attempting to carry out — like a clumsy copyist — towards 
 Italy and the Papacy.* 
 
 Monarchy — having long since exhausted that portion of 
 a mission which circumstances had assigned to it, and to 
 which it was often false, — overthrown by a revolution which 
 summed up all anterior attempts of the popular element — 
 newly arisen, after the Napoleonic dictatorship, by help of 
 foreign bayonets like a galvanised corpse, — re-denied every 
 fifteen or eighteen years by new revolutions, — guilty of 
 having twice drawn foreign invasion into France, — 
 unsustained by faith even among its servants, — supporting 
 itself by pandering to the interests or greed of the 
 bourgeoisie and a fraction of the people, — possessing 
 no single element of genuine or spontaneous life, and con- 
 strained to maintain the semblance of life by compromises 
 
 * 1872.
 
 M. REN AN AND FRANCE. 375 
 
 which degrade, concessions it studies to betray, and 
 hypocrisies which avail but for a brief space while they dis- 
 honour — in conditions such as these, monarchy, whether 
 of Chambord, Orleans, or Bonaparte, may add another 
 stratum of corruption to the many existing in France ; it 
 cannot recall her to life. 
 
 It is grievous to see a man of Kenan's intellectual worth 
 propose monarchy as a remedy. It is amazing to see him, 
 subjugated by the logical consequences of a first error and 
 dragging himself from ruin to ruin, from rubbish to 
 rubbish, seeking the elements of new life in a rechauffe of 
 institutions substantially evil, and at the present day 
 impossible. 
 
 Religious and political institutions once extinguished by 
 the work of time cannot be rekindled, and when Maehia- 
 velli said that it was necessary from time to time to carry 
 things back to their beginnings, he was false to his own 
 great intellect. The attempts to recall Christianity to its 
 primitive virtues ; to re-link the Papacy with the emanci- 
 pated and enlarged life of the peoples, or to renew the vital 
 spirit and initiative power of monarchy in Europe, are all 
 and equally the dreams of a mind diseased, struck with 
 intellectual amaurosis, and incapable of seeing the inevitable 
 destiny hanging over Europe. 
 
 Art itself is incapable of renewing its vitality at the 
 sources of the past. The attempt headed by Overbeck in 
 Germany, the imitations of the Umbrian school, the 
 religious efforts of some of the English pre-Raffaellites, all 
 have failed and will fail. These artists may revive the 
 forms, they cannot revive the soul of the old painters 
 whom they select as their models. Fra Angelico knelt in 
 tearful prayer before painting, and these men do not pray. 
 Faith in the Christian dogma is extinct in the hearts of men.
 
 3i6 MAZZINL 
 
 Renan proposes to re-create an aristocracy : " pas de 
 royaute," he says, " sans noblesse ; ces deux chose3 reposent 
 au fond sur le meme principe." (Page 77.) 
 
 And this is true ; but it is an argument in convalidation 
 of our republican faith. Who can create an aristocracy 1 
 Napoleon attempted it and produced a miserable parody of 
 the past. He did but create enemies, or prompt deserters 
 from his own cause, and for France a laughing-stock, com- 
 posed of titles, ribbons, and coats of arms. 
 
 " La base de la vie provinciale devrait ainsi etre un honnete gentil- 
 homnie de village, bien loyal, et un bon cure de campagne tout entier 
 devoue a l'education morale du peuple." (Page 78.) 
 
 And a few pages earlier : — 
 
 " La conscience d'une nation reside dans la partie eclairee de la 
 nation, laquelle entraine et commando* le reste. La civilisation h 
 l'origine a ete une ceuvre aristocratique, l'ceuvre d'un tout petit 
 nombre (nobles at pretres), qui l'ont imposee par ce que les democrates 
 appellent force emposture ; la conservation de la civilisation est une 
 oeuvre aristocratique aussi. ... La France de meme avait ete crece 
 par le roi, la noblesse, le clerge, le tiers etat. Le peuple proprement 
 dit et les paysans, aujourd'hui maitres absolu de la maison, y sonl en 
 rMitJ des intrus, des frelons impatronisis dans une ruche qu'ils n'ont 
 pas construite." (Page 67 et passim.) 
 
 I will not waste time in commenting upon the hard, 
 insolent forms of expression adopted by the writer in 
 speaking of the men who for ages maintained the glory, 
 unity, and progress of France with the sweat of their brows 
 and their hearts' blood. But where is the French village 
 gentleman to be found 1 where the curd exclusively devoted 
 to the moral education of the people ? And, to go further 
 back, where is the enlightened aristocracy which is, above 
 every class, the depository of the national conscience 1 A 
 patriciate cannot be created. It is either the growth of
 
 M. RENAN AND FRANCE. 317 
 
 conquest (Germanic or other), implanted by the sword in. 
 lands enervated and corrupted by despotism and incapable 
 of self-defence, or of indisputable intellectual superiority, 
 or of long service rendered to their country by certain 
 wealthy and privileged families. The old patrician families 
 are either extinct or have degenerated through the slothful 
 idleness of ages. The debts and mortgages contracted by 
 unworthy descendants have transferred the most stable 
 portion of their wealth — their estates — to the hands of 
 plebeian money-lenders ; and, in the meantime, navigation, 
 improved methods of communication, industry, commerce, 
 and unwearying perseverance, have created a new Power in 
 the wealthy bourgeoise class. The spread of education, tho 
 press, and the spirit of the age, all of which are resolutely 
 bent on progress, have abolished all class superiority of 
 intellect ; and both science and inspiration are now found 
 among all classes of citizens. At the present day it is a 
 rare thing to find a patrician name fixed to any of the 
 scientific, philosophical, political or literary works which 
 advance civilisation ; rare to find such a name at the head 
 of any of the numerous provident or benevolent enterprises, 
 or national productive enterprises tending to the progress 
 of the popular classes. The hereditary aristocracy of blood 
 no longer exists in France, except in name ; the manufac- 
 turer has destroyed the gentilhomme. The sole aristocracy 
 of to-day is the aristocracy of wealth ; the sole aristocracy 
 of to-morrow will be the eternal, divine, beneficent aristo- 
 cracy of intellect at its highest power — genius ; but that, 
 like everything that descends from God, will arise among 
 the people, and labour for the people. 
 
 States can only be founded upon elements which arc at 
 once living and life-giving ; and life is synonymous with 
 progress, with initiative. Monarchy and aristocracy have
 
 318 MAZZINI. 
 
 no longer sufficient capacity for the first, nor sufficient 
 power and daring for the second. Monarchy either resists 
 or compromises ; aristocracy, in the slow suicide of idleness, 
 both serves and ignores the restless advance of humanity. 
 Can you, by uncovering a tomb, awaken life within its 
 walls ? 
 
 " Le victoire de la Prusse a ete la victoire de la royaute de droit 
 quasi-divin (de droit bistorique)." 
 
 No ; the Prussian monarchy is the most recent in 
 Europe ; the true victory was the victory of German 
 nationality over those who assumed to impede its develop- 
 ment. The threat against the Rhine produced Sedan. It 
 was through that stupid threat that Southern Germany 
 and the Catholic element, upon which Louis Napoleon had 
 calculated against Prussia, were at once ranged in the front 
 rank against him. The King, by " quasi-divine right," 
 only conquered because he took the field wrapped in the 
 flag of unity. 
 
 Monarchy, aristocracy, two Chambers with secret sittings, 
 Paris denied the right of electing a mayor, a council, or a 
 national guard ; China colonised through conquest — all 
 these remedies, suggested by Renan for the pressing ills of 
 the present, would not save France from decay. The true 
 remedy is quite other, and Renan has strangely dwarfed 
 the problem. A sentence like the following — 
 
 " S'il est vrai, comme ill semble, que la royaute et l'organisation 
 nobiliaire de 1'armee sont perdues choz les peuples Latins, il faut dire 
 que les peuples Latins appellent une nouvelle invasion Germanique et 
 la subiront," 
 
 is sufficient to prove him incapable of grasping and com- 
 prehending the subject in its full magnitude. The German 
 invasion which overwhelmed the Latin races in the fifth
 
 M. RE NAN AND FRANCE. 319 
 
 century, did not triumph because those peoples lacked 
 monarchs or patricians ; but because monarchy — sunk into 
 a capricious despotism — no longer fulfilled any mission, 
 and the patriciate, a shadow of its former self, under 
 standing nothing and caring nothing for nationality, lacked 
 the energy to identify its destiny with that of the country ; 
 because wealth had substituted materialism for the old 
 religion and the old faith in the future of Rome ; because 
 that future already belonged to Christianity, and the 
 incapable masters of the Latin races perceived it not ; 
 because the writers of Rome were sceptics, her wealthier 
 classes insatiably voluptuous and corrupt, and her people 
 (the Christians excepted) brutal, superstitious, grasping and 
 servile. 
 
 The problem set before France is triple : political, social, 
 and religious. It i3 necessary to secure to the country the 
 organisation most fitted to replace her on the path of 
 progress, to solve the labour question, and to elevate 
 morally, intellectually, and economically the whole of the 
 numerous class called upon by the times to enter as partner 
 into the social firm, or to destroy it ; and by means of a 
 religious education to establish a general duty, and awaken 
 a general sense of the necessity of fulfilling it. 
 
 As to the political problem, I have already said that 
 Renan proposes to solve it by a return to the past. Of tho 
 social problem he does not speak ; and he makes tlio 
 religious problem the subject of the most singular, and — I 
 must add — immoral compromise that could enter into tho 
 brain of a thinker. Addressing himself to the Church, he 
 says : — 
 
 "A un certain degre do la culturo rationnolle, la croyance au 
 surnaturcl devient pour plusieurs uno impossibility ; ne forcez pas 
 ccux-la a porter une chape do plomb. Ne vou3 melez pas do co quo
 
 3 2o MAZZINL 
 
 nous enseignons, de ce que nous ecrivons, ot nous ne vous disputcrons 
 IMS le peuple : ne nous contestez pas notre place h, l'universite, k 
 l'academie, et nous abandonnerons sans partage Vecole de campctgne." 
 
 How a book in which such things are written can be 
 entitled " La Reforme intellectuelle et morale," — how a 
 book which thus sanctions a dual morality, which says : — 
 Give to us, literary men, the truth ; leave the people to error, 
 — a book which assumes the possibility of an active frater- 
 nisation in a single national aim, between men holding the 
 doctrine of the Fall, and men holding the doctrine of 
 Progress; between men who rest their hope of salvation 
 upon grace, and men who believe in a just retribution fol- 
 lowing upon human action ; between men who regard the 
 earth as the dwelling-place of fated sin and error, and men 
 who regard it as a single stage upon the ascent toward the 
 eternal ideal — I cannot understand. This may be the 
 monarchical doctrine — ours it can never be. 
 
 Let us remain republicans and apostles of our faith, for 
 the people and with the people : reverencing genius, but on 
 condition that, like the sun, it diffuse its light, warmth, and 
 life upon the multitudes. Truth is the shadow of God on 
 earth, and he who seeks to monopolise it to himself is an 
 assassin of the soul ; even as he who hears the cry of an 
 agony he might relieve, yet passes on, is an assassin of the 
 body. Intellect, like every other faculty given by God, is 
 given for the benefit of all ; a double duty towards his 
 brother-men devolves upon him who has more than the rest. 
 Our life should be an incessant apostolate — in word, in 
 deed, and in example — of that which we believe to be the 
 truth. He who sets bounds to that apostolate, denies the 
 unity of God and of the human family ; he who despairs of 
 the intellect of the people denies history, which shows us 
 the unlearned ever the first to seize and comprehend,
 
 M. RENAN AND FRANCE. 321 
 
 through the heart's logic, the newest and most daring truths 
 of religion. 
 
 It is true that the people in France, as elsewhere, are 
 now misguided and led astray by demagogues who trade 
 upon the credulity of some and the ignorance of others ; 
 led astray by those materialist desires to which the leaders 
 of the socialist schools have dwarfed a problem essentially 
 moral ; led astray by their exaggeration of principles true 
 in themselves, and by the dominating ideas of the old 
 Revolution, just in their day as an inevitable rebellion 
 against anterior wrongs, but which France persists in regard- 
 ing as prophetic of a new epoch ; and led astray by errors 
 which Renan himself condemns (with occasional exaggeration 
 however) in some exceedingly fine pages (241 et passim). 
 
 But are we not in a period of transition 1 Have not the 
 same errors been traceable in all historic periods of transi- 
 tion 1 And did not they vanish after a while, leaving the 
 Idea around which they had accumulated, shining forth 
 with pure and beneficent light 1 Is not the hour before 
 dawn ever the darkest in the mental, as well as the physical 
 heaven 1 and shall we, from irritation at the vapours by 
 which it is surrounded, curse the star of day 1 Let us hold 
 fast to our republican faith. Let us still fight on, serene in 
 conscience, though sad at heart, and fronting alike calumny 
 and blame, exaggeration and ingratitude, error and wrong. 
 Let us not deny the true faith because of heresy ; let us 
 reverence the ruins of all that was great in the past, but let 
 us not linger among them. They are a potent symbol of 
 the life of that Humanity whose children we are, but the 
 future of life is beyond. The Pyramids are also sublime ; 
 but they are motionless — are tombs. For us, voyagers on 
 <' the great sea of Being," the insignia is duty, the condition 
 of existence is motion. 
 
 35S
 
 322 MAZZINL 
 
 III. 
 
 Enough of the errors contained in Kenan's book. But 
 how is it that such errors find a place there % Renan is an 
 acute, at times a bold thinker. History is his familiar 
 study, and he ought to have learned from it alike the law 
 of progress and the methods by which that law is fulfilled. 
 How is it that one who declares all faith in the supernatural 
 extinct, yet retains his faith in the long extinct monarchical 
 principle 1 Why such hasty discouragement with regard 
 to his beloved France 1 Why seek to recall her to the 
 worship of the past, while, with respect to all things else, 
 his glance is turned (no matter if misconceiving it) towards 
 the future ? The ascending movement of democracy is as 
 evident to those who dread it as to those who hail it with 
 applause ; it is a European fact ; it rules and moves, not 
 one, but all the manifestations of human life ; repression is 
 of no avail, for if repulsed on one point, it rises up more 
 powerfully upon another. A hundred years of regularly 
 increasing agitation prove a vitality which cannot die. 
 How is it that Renan can hope to see it retrace its steps to 
 the king of the middle ages, the gentilhomme du village, 
 and the cure de campagne ? 
 
 The field of democracy is furrowed by error. Ideas 
 leading to consequences the most immoral, exaggerations as 
 wild as dangerous, deface it in France and threaten it 
 elsewhere ; but why not attack these 1 Why not unite 
 with other thinkers to form an apostolate which shall 
 purify it from its errors, and render it all that it ought to 
 be and is capable of becoming ? Are not its very exaggera- 
 tions in a great measure the result of irrational resistance 
 on the one hand and ignorance on the other 1 The faults 
 and mistakes of the present are sad realities, but they will
 
 M. REN AN AND FRANCE. 323 
 
 not endure for ever, and the utter impossibility of reaching 
 the goal by tortuous paths, will prove their condemnation. 
 In any case, we can never lead the wanderer into the right 
 path by either compelling him to retrace his steps or 
 denying him the faculty of motion. All the actual errors 
 of democracy spring from one common source, from one 
 primary error of direction given to the democratic idea ; 
 from the imperfect view taken of human life and of the 
 world. And it is important to trace out this source, to 
 examine this imperfect view. Kenan does not stand alone ; 
 the same tendency is revealed by other political writers ; 
 but his former works have rendered his name influential 
 among those superficial thinkers — too numerous every- 
 where — who, attracted and dazzled by occasional brilliancy 
 of thought or fascination of form, fail to penetrate the 
 fundamental conception which, however disguised, does in 
 fact govern the whole of his writings. 
 
 Frankly then, although the form, language, and certain 
 secondary ideas borrowed from our school, induce such 
 careless and superficial readers to attribute a spiritualistic 
 tendency to his works, the doctrine of Kenan is, in fact, an 
 emanation or variation of that Materialism which both 
 misconstrues and impedes the recognition of the idea — 
 progress, which is destined to become the synthesis and 
 religious law of the new epoch. The materialism of Rtnan 
 is not the brutal materialism of the atheists of the 
 eighteenth century, and of the degenerate Germans of our 
 own ; it is the mild, veiled, and somewhat Jesuitical 
 materialism of the Hegelian school. For the members of 
 this school truth indeed exists, but it is relative, reflected ; 
 the result of time and place, and legitimate — no matter 
 what shape it assume — as a manifestation of the Ego. The 
 world indeed exists ; but only as a succession of transitory
 
 324 MAZZINI. 
 
 phenomena, to study, understand, or contemplate winch is 
 our part here below. The ideal exists, but only within, not 
 without ourselves ; it is the highest formula of our notions 
 of the beautiful, the just, and the useful ; a conception, not 
 an aim. 
 
 Every reality, every fait accompli is, because it ought to 
 be ; in the fact of its existence lies its reason or right to 
 exist. Every evolution, every phenomenon, is cause and 
 effect in one. God does not exist, or it is useless to 
 attempt the impossible enterprise of discovering whether 
 He exists or not ; but man creates* Him, and tradition 
 having made of Him an important historical element, it is 
 useful to preserve the symbol and the name — all these are 
 but consequences of that materialist conception which 
 neither sees nor is capable of seeing aught in the world but 
 a finite series of phenomena, produced by the forces of a 
 certain quantity of necessarily finite matter, fatally linked 
 together and destined to repeat themselves — circular 
 movement, not progress. 
 
 The effect of ideas such as these upon the method of 
 understanding history and the development of human things 
 is obvious, and sufficiently explains the suggestions of Renan 
 
 * "Le mot Dieu etant en possession des respects de l'hurnanite, cc 
 mot ayant pour lui une longue prescription, et ayant Hi employe 
 dans les belles poesies, ce serait renverser toutes les habitudes du 
 langage que de l'abandonner. Ditcs aux simples de vivre d'aspiration 
 a la verite, a la beaute, a la bonte morale, ces mots n'auront pour 
 eux aucun sens. Dites-leur d'aiaier Dieu, de ne pas offeuser Dieu, 
 ils vous comprendront a merveille. Dieu, Providence, immortalite, 
 autant de bon vieux mots, un peu lourd peut-etre, que la philosophic 
 interpreter dans des sens de plus en plus raffine3, misa qu'elle ne 
 remplacera jamais avec avantage. Sous une forme ou sous une autre, 
 Dieu sera toujours le resume de nos besoins supra-scnsibles, !a 
 categorie de l'ideal (c'est-k-dire, la forme sous laquelle nous concevous 
 l'id&l)."
 
 M. REN AN AND FRANCE. 325 
 
 with regard to France. Having eliminated the existence of 
 any absolute and supreme Ideal, and any providential or 
 educational Law, the only remaining rule by which to judge 
 men and things is fact. The real — the mutable, contingent 
 and relative real — takes the place of the eternally true. All 
 conception of collective life is rendered logically impossible. 
 Analysis reigns supreme, but incapable of grasping other 
 than facts, separately and successively observed, and deprived 
 of all means of arriving at a comprehension of their origin, 
 of arranging them in series, and estimating their true value. 
 Tradition remains the sole criterion, the sole means of 
 forming any notion as to the former growth and develop- 
 ment of the peoples ; a criterion necessarily arrested at the 
 threshold of the future. The innate tendency of the human 
 mind to reascend from fact to fact leads it to concentrate 
 tradition, and seek its lessons in the earliest periods. A 
 nation is, in the eyes of the materialist school, nothing more 
 than the necessary and definite expansion of a primary germ 
 (or fact) generative of a long series of necessary con- 
 sequences. And even as the seed contains within it the 
 finite series of manifestations which constitute the tree — 
 a series which is only exhausted to repeat itself — so the 
 nation, when the consequences of the first potent gush of 
 life which called it into being are exhausted, can only renew 
 her existence by a return to the source from which she 
 originally derived her vitality and power. If, therefore, 
 tradition prove the earliest vitality of the nation to have 
 assumed a monarchical form, monarchy becomes, for the 
 adepts of this school, a necessity. If it can be proved that 
 liberty underwent a certain degree of development under 
 monarchy, it is for them a sign that monarchy is the safe- 
 guard of liberty ; and if it is clear that the patriciate 
 opposed the attempted usurpations of monarchy in ages 
 
 356*
 
 326 MAZZINL 
 
 past, it is a sign that a patriciate is necessary to the 
 maintenance of the national equilibrium. The ideal of 
 the government of a people therefore consists in the 
 preservation of all the elements which contributed to its 
 existence in the past, and establishing them side by side 
 in the utmost possible equality. 
 
 It was upon this theory that Guizot proclaimed the 
 eternity and eternal legitimacy of four elements — the 
 theocratic, monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic — of all 
 of which he traced the successive development in the 
 political life of the peoples. And thus it was that Cousin 
 proclaimed the secret of philosophy to consist in the union, 
 by aggregation, of four elements — idealism, materialism, 
 scepticism, and mysticism — because he found that all of 
 them had existed in anterior epochs. As Hegel proclaimed 
 that the end of progress had been reached by the institutions 
 of Prussia, so did Cousin and Guizot proclaim the inviola- 
 bility of the Constitution granted to France by Louis 
 XVIIL, wherein the four elements of the past were, in 
 fact, more or less imperfectly represented. 
 
 Fatalism — whether assuming an aspect of optimism or 
 pessimism — is the unavoidable outcome and consequence of 
 the teachings of this school. And the consequences of 
 fatalism are, the justification of evil and the substitution of 
 contemplation for action. Who indeed shall condemn evil, 
 if all things are inevitably linked together in a series of 
 phenomena which are cause and effect in one, in virtue of 
 certain laws and forces of matter, immutable because unin- 
 telligent % Why struggle against events, if the very fact of 
 their occurrence declares their right to occur ? 
 
 How many French, English, and German writers have 
 we not of late years seen assume the role of learned 
 apologists for evil, and profane the stern morality of
 
 M. REN AN AND FRANCE. 327 
 
 history by "rehabilitation" of Caesar, Scylla, Nero, and 
 Caligula ! * 
 
 A spirit of mute, inert contemplation, which merely 
 comprehends and admires, has, in the majority of thinkers, 
 taken the place of the spirit of action which deduces, 
 foresees, and transforms. The study of the past absorbs 
 nearly all the intellectual men of the day : the character of 
 nearly all the political, philosophical, and religious works 
 which issue from the press is critical or historical ; one 
 might imagine that all consciousness of a future is extin- 
 guished amongst us. Art either laments, curses, or imitates. 
 I know of no poetry, that of Poland alone excepted, which 
 displays any sense of its true mission — that of arousing 
 mankind to translate thought into action. 
 
 ''Le savant ne se propose qu'un but speculatif, sans aucune applica- 
 tion directe a l'ordre des faits contemporains. . . . Le penseur no so 
 croit qu'un bien faible droit k la direction des affaires de sa planete, et, 
 satisfait de la portion qui lui est echue, il accepte l'impuissance sans 
 regret. Spectateur dans Vunivers, il sait que le monde ne lui appartien9 
 que com me sujet d'etude." 
 
 Those lines, written by Renan in the preface to his 
 Eludes d'Histoire religieuse, sum up but too well the 
 intellectual position of nearly all the thinkers of the day. 
 It is in this school that Renan has acquired not only his 
 habit of barren contemplation, but the monarchico-aristo- 
 cratic remedy he proposes for the malady of France— the 
 scepticism which lurks in the best pages of his works — 
 his tendency to separate men of thought from the people — 
 the profane vulgar, and that spirit of religious indifference 
 which i3 so entirely distinct from tolerance. 
 
 * One of the ministers of Louis Napoleon, Duruy, attempted to justify 
 himself and the Empire in a Latin thesis rehabilitating the memory 
 and the crimes of Tiberius.
 
 3*3 MAZZINI. 
 
 Accused, justly as I think, of having so written his Lift 
 of Jesus to conceal its real purpose, Renan declared in the 
 introduction to Les Apotres that he had had no purpose. 
 
 " Ces ceuvres doivent etre executees avec une supreme indifference, 
 comme si Ton ecrivait pour une planete deserte. . . . Le premier 
 principe de l'ecole critique, en effet, est que chacun admet en matiere 
 de foi ce qu'il a besoin d'admettre, et fait en quelque sorte le lit de ses 
 croyances proportionne a sa mesure et a sa taille. Comment serions nous 
 assez insense pour nous meler de ce qui depend de circonstances sur 
 lesquelles personne ne peut rien ? . . . Pour moi, le jour on Ton 
 pourrait me convaincre d'un effort pour attirer a mes idees un suel 
 adherent qui n'y vieut pas de lui-meme on me causeiait la peine la plus 
 vive. J'en conclurais ou que mon esprit s'est laisse troubler dans sa 
 libre et sereine allure, ou que quelque chose s'est appesanti en moi, 
 puisqucje ne suis plus capable de me contentcr de lajoycuse contemplation 
 de Vunivers." 
 
 Again :— 
 
 "Je sais que les recherches d'histoire reiigieuse toucbeut a des 
 questions vives qui sembleut exiger une solution. Les personnes peu 
 familiarisees avec la libre speculation ne comprennent pas les calmcs 
 lenteurs de la pensee ; les esprits pratiques s'impatientent contre la 
 science qui ne repond pas a leurs empressements. Defendons-nous de 
 ces vaines ardeurs. Gardons-nous de rien fonder : restons dans nos 
 Eglises respectives, profitant de leur culte seculaire et de leur tradition 
 de vertu, participant a leur bonnes ceuvres et jouissant de la poesie de 
 leur passe\ Ne repoussons pas leur intolerance. Pardonnons nieme a 
 cette intolerance, car elle est, comme Tegoisme, une des necessites de la 
 nature humaine." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " Le bon eveque Colenso a fait un acte d'honnetete comme l'Eglise 
 u'en a pas vu depuis son origine en ecrivant ses doutes des qu'ils lui 
 sont venus. Mais l'humble prUre catholique, en un pays etroit et 
 timide, doit se taire. ... La theorie n'est pas la pratique." 
 
 And finally : — 
 
 "Lucrece et Sainto Therese, Aristophane et Socrate, Voltaire et 
 Francois d' Assise, Raphael et Vincent de Paul ont egalement raison 
 d'etre, et l'humanite serait moindre si un seul des elements qui la 
 eomposent lui manquait."
 
 M. REN AN AND FRANCE. 329 
 
 I know not whether rightly or wrongly, but I know that my 
 whole soul rises up in indignation against the spirit of quiet- 
 ism, or, more frankly speaking, egotism, which breathes 
 throughout the doctrine contained in the above lines. 
 
 The questions thus calmly dismissed are questions which 
 have cost and are destined yet to cost humanity both tears 
 and blood, and no thinking man has a right to regard them 
 merely as a subject of analysis, of intellectual gymnastics ; 
 to remain indifferent to their practical solution, and to 
 govern by the cold calculations of prudence or aesthetic 
 predilection, the holiest duty assigned to the human crea- 
 ture — the duty of proselytism, of the apostolate of that 
 which we hold to be the truth. 
 
 Intellect is the treasure, the sacred deposit confided to 
 the thinker by God, in order that he may distribute it 
 among those of his brother-men who are unable to reach the 
 goal alone. Aristophanes and Socrates, the accuser and 
 the victim, have indeed each of them their raison d'etre, 
 but on condition that we condemn the memory of the 
 first and raise an altar in our hearts in remembrance of the 
 martyrdom of the second. Tyranny also has, too often, its 
 raison d'etre in the corruption of a people ; in the substitu- 
 tion of the egotism of interests for the religion of duty, in 
 the adulation lavished upon power by materialist or 
 cowardly men of letters, who flatter power for the sake of 
 the enjoyments it can bestow ; but the honest few are 
 bound to fan the flame of virtue to rouse to resistance, and 
 to wield both pen and sword against tyranny and tyrants. 
 Evil is the blind unconscious instrument of progress in the 
 world solely on condition of being combated, crushed, and 
 gradually eliminated from the world in the name of pro- 
 gress; and such elimination does not impoverish but 
 elevate and enrich humanity. We are here on earth not
 
 330 MAZZINL 
 
 to contemplate, but to transform created things ; to found, 
 as far as in us lies, the image of the " Kingdom of God " 
 on earth — not to admire earth's contrasts. Egotism nearly 
 always lurks beneath contemplation. Our world is not a 
 spectacle; it is a field of battle, upon which all who in 
 their hearts love justice, beauty, and holiness, are bound 
 — whether as leaders or soldiers, conquerors or martyrs — 
 to play their part. 
 
 I feel myself impelled to declare these things with double 
 earnestness in a country like my own, where the minds of 
 the young, so recently issued out of the darkness and 
 silence of enforced immobility, are more than elsewhere 
 eager after novel doctrines, little apt to penetrate their 
 dangers, hasty of judgment, and far too ready to yield 
 credence wheresoever they find external beauty of form or 
 semblance of daring in the ideas expressed. 
 
 The school to which Renan belongs has — from Guizot 
 downwards — misdirected the course of historic study and 
 perverted all understanding of the past in France : it has 
 powerfully contributed to warp that moral sense and blunt 
 that spirit of action which can alone serve to unite men of 
 thought with the people. The school confounds the history 
 of political science and philosophy with the science and 
 philosophy themselves ; life, with some of its temporary 
 manifestations ; ideas, with the instruments employed to 
 establish them upon the field of reality. It is a negation of 
 progress, which is the continuous revelation of new ideas ; 
 of human liberty, which is the responsible choice between 
 good and evil ; of morality, which absolves or condemns ; 
 and of history, which is the record of its judgment. 
 
 To this school, our Italian school — if we are again to 
 have an Italian school — will oppose the following simple 
 but fruitful affirmations : —
 
 M. RE NAN AND FRANCE. 331 
 
 Every existence has an aim. Life, human life, has 
 achieved the consciousness of this fact ; life is therefore a 
 mission — the mission of reaching the aim : it consists in 
 incessant activity upon the path towards it, and a perennial 
 battle against the obstacles it encounters upon that path. 
 The Ideal is not within, but beyond us and supreme over 
 us : it is not the creation, but the gradual discovery of the 
 human intellect. The law which directs the discovery is 
 named Progress : the method by which progress is achieved 
 is Association — the association of all the human faculties 
 and forces. The ultimate discovery of the aim of life is 
 assured by Providential design, but time and space are 
 given to us wherein to achieve it, and are therefore the 
 held of liberty and responsibility for each and all of us. 
 Our choice lies between evil, which is egotism, and good, 
 which is love and sacrifice for the sake of our fellow-men. 
 The faculty of choice, of discovering the path of progress, 
 having been bestowed upon us, social institutions are the 
 means by which we incarnate our thought in action, and 
 advance towards the realisation of the providential design. 
 
 Every collective work necessitates division of labour : 
 the existence of distinct nations is a consequence of this 
 necessity. Every nation has a special function, or mission, 
 in the collective work, and a special aptitude fitting her to 
 perform that function. This is her insignia, her baptism, 
 the sign of her legitimacy. Each nation is one of the work- 
 people of humanity, and labours for the advance of humanity 
 towards the common goal and for the common good. Every 
 nation which neglects to fulfil this special function betrays 
 her mission, sinks into egotism, decays, and undergoes a 
 period of expiation proportionate to her error or offence. 
 For the separate nations, as for humanity, the various 
 stages of education are named epochs. Every epoch reveals
 
 1Z 2 
 
 MAZZINI. 
 
 one fragment of the Ideal — one line of the divine Idea. A 
 philosophy prepares the way for the discovery ; a religion 
 then sanctifies the new idea, by elevating it into a duty ; 
 a political science then translates it gradually into facts, 
 into the practical manifestations of life, and an art 
 symbolises it for us. 
 
 The initiation of the new epoch — which is the solemn 
 annunciation of a new principle — is accomplished by a 
 revolution ; the evolution — the gradual, pacific development 
 of that principle — constitutes the subsequent life of the 
 entire epoch. During that evolution the nations pro- 
 gressively adopt and employ those different elements which 
 are their instruments of labour — their tools. Monarchies, 
 patriciates, and priesthoods — all these are but the instru- 
 ments of the nation, to be modified or changed according 
 to the necessity of the times, and the greater or less power 
 of service there is in them, until the whole people, awakened 
 to full consciousness and comprehension of the principle, 
 become its progressive interpreter. 
 
 Revolutions are to the nations and to humanity what 
 instruction is to individuals. 
 
 The tradition of a people is also divided into periods, 
 each of which is countersigned by a revolution, which 
 points out and calls into action a new and better instru- 
 ment in place of one worn out. That tradition cannot be 
 rightly studied in one or several of its periods ; the organis- 
 ation of the new period cannot rightly be founded upon 
 those elements which have proved useful in one or several 
 periods of the past. Only from the study of the entire 
 tradition of all the stages reached by the nation in its past 
 progress towards the destined aim, can we direct our choice 
 of the new element calculated most efficaciously to promote 
 its further advance upon the path of the future. 
 
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 2 SPENCE'S ANECDOTES. A SELECTION. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction and Notes, by John Underhill. 
 
 3 MORE'S UTOPIA, AND LIFE OF EDWARD V. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Maurice Adams. 
 
 4 SADI'S GULISTAN, OR FLOWER GARDEN. TRANS- 
 
 lated, with an Essay, by James Ross. 
 
 5 ENGLISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. EDITED BY 
 
 E. Sidney Hartland. 
 
 6 NORTHERN STUDIES. BY EDMUND GOSSE. WITH 
 
 a Note by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 7 EARLY REVIEWS OF GREAT WRITERS. EDITED BY 
 
 E. Stevenson. 
 
 8 ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. WITH GEORGE HENRY 
 
 Lewes's Essay on Aristotle prefixed. 
 
 9 LANDOR'S PERICLES AND ASPASIA. EDITED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Havelock Ellis. 
 
 5o ANNALS OF TACITUS. THOMAS GORDON'S TRANS- 
 lation. Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Galton. 
 
 6i ESSAYS OF ELIA. BY CHARLES LAMB. EDITED, 
 with an Introduction, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 62 BALZAC'S SHORTER STORIES. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 William Wilson and the Count Stenbock. 
 
 63 COMEDIES OF DE MUSSET. EDITED, WITH AN 
 
 Introductory Note, by S. L. Gwynn. 
 
 64 CORAL REEFS. BY CHARLES DARWIN. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Dr. J. W. Williams. 
 
 65 SHERIDAN'S PLAYS. EDITED, WITH AN INTRO- 
 
 duction, by Rudolf Dircks. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square. 

 
 THE SCOTT LIBRARY— continued. 
 
 66 OUR VILLAGE. BY MISS MITFORD. EDITED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 67 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK, AND OTHER STORIES, 
 
 By Charles Dickens. With Introduction by Frank T. Marzials. 
 
 68 TALES FROM WONDERLAND. BY RUDOLPH 
 
 Baunibach. Translated by Helen B. Dole. 
 
 69 ESSAYS AND PAPERS BY DOUGLAS JERROLD. EDITED 
 
 by Walter Jerrold. 
 
 70 VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. BY 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft. Introduction by Mrs. E. Robins Pennell. 
 
 71 "THE ATHENIAN ORACLE." A SELECTION. EDITED 
 
 by John Underbill, with Prefatory Note by Walter Besant. 
 
 72 ESSAYS OF SAINTE-BEUVE. TRANSLATED AND 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Elizabeth Lee. 
 
 73 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. FROM THE TRANS- 
 
 lation of Sydenham and Taylor. Edited by T. W. Rolleston. 
 
 74 HEINE'S ITALIAN TRAVEL SKETCHES, ETC. TRANS- 
 
 lated by Elizabeth A. Sharp. With an Introduction from the French of 
 Theophile Gautier. 
 
 75 SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS. TRANSLATED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Major-General Patrick Maxwell. 
 
 76 SELECTIONS FROM SYDNEY SMITH. EDITED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 77 THE NEW SPIRIT. BY HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
 
 78 THE BOOK OF MARVELLOUS ADVENTURES. FROM 
 
 the "Morte d' Arthur." Edited by Ernest B" 
 No. 1, forms the complete "Morte d' Arthur."] 
 
 79 ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. BY SIR ARTHUR HELPS 
 
 With an Introduction by E. A. Helps. 
 
 80 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE. SELECTED, WITH A 
 
 Prefatory Note, by Percival Chubb. 
 
 81 THE LUCK OF BARRY LYNDON. BY W. M. 
 
 Thackeray. Edited by F. T. Marzials. 
 
 82 SCHILLER'S WILLIAM TELL. TRANSLATED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Major-General Patrick Maxwell. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square.
 
 THE SCOTT LIBRARY-continued. 
 
 83 CARLYLE'S ESSAYS ON GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 With an Introduction by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 84 PLAYS AND DRAMATIC ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Rudolf Dircks. 
 
 85 THE PROSE OF WORDSWORTH. SELECTED AND 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Professor William Knight. 
 
 86 ESSAYS, DIALOGUES, AND THOUGHTS OF COUNT 
 
 Giacomo Leopardi. Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by 
 Major-General Patrick Maxwell. 
 
 87 THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL. A RUSSIAN COMEDY. 
 
 By Nikolai V. Gogol. Translated from the original, with an Introduction 
 and Notes, by Arthur A. Sykes. 
 
 88 ESSAYS AND APOTHEGMS OF FRANCIS, LORD BACON. 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by John Buchan. 
 
 89 PROSE OF MILTON. SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Richard Garnett, LL.D. 
 
 90 THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Thomas Taylor, with an Introduction by Theodore Wratislaw. 
 
 91 PASSAGES FROM FROISSART. WITH AN INTRO- 
 
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 92 THE PROSE AND TABLE TALK OF COLERIDGE. 
 
 Edited by Will H. Dircks. 
 
 93 HEINE IN ART AND LETTERS. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Elizabeth A. Sharp. 
 
 94 SELECTED ESSAYS OF DE QUINCEY. WITH AN 
 
 Introduction by Sir George Douglas, Bart. 
 
 95 VASARI'S LIVES OF ITALIAN PAINTERS. SELECTED 
 
 and Prefaced by Havelock Ellis. 
 
 96 LAOCOON, AND OTHER PROSE WRITINGS OF 
 
 LESSING. A new Translation by W. B. Ronnfeldt. 
 
 97 PELLEAS AND MELISANDA, AND THE SIGHTLESS. 
 
 Two Plays by Maurice Maeterlinck. Translated from the French by 
 Laurence Alma Tadema. 
 
 98 THE COMPLETE ANGLER OF WALTON AND COTTON. 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Charles Hill Dick. 
 
 London : Walter Scott, Limited, Paternoster Square.
 
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 99 LESSING'S NATHAN THE WISE. TRANSLATED BY 
 Major-General Patrick Maxwell. 
 
 ioo THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES, AND OTHER 
 Essays of Ernest Renan. Translated by W. G. Hutchison. 
 
 ioi CRITICISMS, REFLECTIONS, AND MAXIMS OF GOETHE. 
 Translated, with an Introduction, by W. B. Ronnfeldt. 
 
 102 ESSAYS OF SCHOPENHAUER. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Mrs. Rudolf Dircks. With an Introduction. 
 
 103 RENAN'S LIFE OF JESUS. TRANSLATED, WITH AN 
 
 Introduction, by William G. HutchisoD. 
 
 104 THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Arthur Symons. 
 
 105 TPIE PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESS IN LITERATURE. 
 
 By George Henry Lewes. Edited, with an Introduction, by T. Sharper 
 Knowlson.
 
 LIBRARY OF HUMOUR 
 
 Cloth Elegant, Large Crovm Svo, Price 3/6 per vol. 
 
 VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED. 
 
 THE HUMOUR OF FRANCE. Translated, with an 
 Introduction and Notes, by Elizabeth Lee. With 
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 Introduction and Notes, by Hans Muller-Casenov. 
 With numerous Illustrations by C. E. Brock. 
 
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 tions and a Frontispiece by Arturo Faldi. 
 
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 copious Biographical Index of American Humorists, by 
 James Barr. 
 
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 THE HUMOUR OF IRELAND. Selected by D. J. 
 O'Donoghue. With numerous Illustrations by Oliver 
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 IBSEN'S PROSE DRAMAS. 
 
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 Vol. V. "ROSMERSHOLM," "THE LADY FROM THE 
 SEA," "HEDDA GABLER." Translated by William 
 Archer. With an Introductory Note. 
 
 The sequence of the plays in each volume is chronological ; the complete 
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 "The art of prose translation does not perhaps enjoy a very high literary 
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 CHRISTIAN Y EAR. With Portrait of John Keble. 
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 SHELLEY. With Portrait of Shelley. 
 WORDSWORTH. With Portrait of Wordsworth. 
 WHITTIER. With Portrait of Whittier. 
 
 BURNS. Songs \ With Portrait of Burns, and View of "The 
 BURNS. Poems! Auld Brig o' Doon." 
 
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 EMERSON. With Portrait of Emerson. 
 
 SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY. Portrait of D. G. Rossetti. 
 WHITMAN. With Portrait of Whitman. 
 
 LOVE LETTERS OF A VIOLINIST. Portrait of Eric Mackay. 
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 etc. V and View of " The Silver 
 
 SCOTT. Marmion, etc. J Strand, Loch Katrine." 
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 SONNETS OF EUROPE. With Portrait of J. A. Symonds. 
 SYDNEY DOBELL. With Portrait of Sydney Dobell. 
 HERRICK. With Portrait of Herrick. 
 BALLADS AND RONDEAUS. Portrait of W. E. Henley. 
 IRISH MINSTRELSY. With Portrait of Thomas Davis. 
 PARADISE LOST. With Portrait of Milton. 
 FAIRY MUSIC. Engraving from Drawing by C. E. Brock. 
 GOLDEN TREASURY. With Engraving of Virgin Mother. 
 AMERICAN SONNETS. With Portrait of J. R. Lowell. 
 IMITATION OF CHRIST. With Engraving, " Ecce Homo." 
 PAINTER POETS. With Portrait of Walter Crane 
 WOMEN POETS. With Portrait of Mrs. Browning 
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 AMERICAN HUMOROUS VERSE. Portrait of Mark Twain. 
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 LOVE LYRICS. With Portrait of Raleigh. 
 
 HERMAN BALLADS. With Portrait of Schiller. 
 
 CAMPBELL. With Portrait of Campbell. 
 
 CANADIAN POEMS. With View of Mount Stephen. 
 
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 COLERIDGE. With Portrait of Coleridge. 
 
 POPE. With Portrait of Pope. 
 
 ™™ ™ sce T !laneous I With Portraits of Byron. 
 BYRON. Don Juan / 
 
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 AUSTRALIAN BALLADS. With Portrait of A. L. Gordon. 
 
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 MOORE. With Portrait of Moore. 
 
 DORA GREENWELL. With Portrait of Dora GreenwelL 
 
 BLAKE. With Portrait of Blake. 
 
 POEMS OF NATURE. With Portrait of Andrew Lang 
 
 PRAED. With Portrait. 
 
 SOUTHEY. With Portrait. 
 
 HUGO. With Portrait. 
 
 GOETHE. With Portrait. 
 
 BERANGER. With Portrait. 
 
 IIKINE. With Portrait. 
 
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 LADY OF LYONS. With Portrait of Bulwer Lytton. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE: Songs and Sonnets. With Portrait. 
 
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 CRABBE. With Portrait. 
 
 CRADLE SONGS. With Engraving from Drawing by T. E. Macklin- 
 
 BALLADS OF SPORT. Do. do. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. With Portrait. 
 
 AUSTIN'S DAYS OF THE YEAR. With Portrait. 
 
 CLOUGH'S BOTHIE, and other Poems. With View. 
 
 BROWNING'S Pippa Passes, etc. >. 
 
 BROWNINGS Blot in the 'Scutcheon, etc. I With Portrait. 
 
 BROWNING'S Dramatic Lyrics. J 
 
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 KIRKE WHITE'S POEMS. With Portrait. 
 
 LYRA NICOTIANA. With Portrait.
 
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 A NEW SERIES OF CRITICAL BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Edited by E. Robertson and F. T. Marzials. 
 
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 Longfellow . By Professor Eric S. Robertson 
 
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