n long forgotten.
They were now exhumed, read, discussed. As for Mazzini, an edition of
his writings was financed by the State itself. Vico, the great Vico, a
formidable preacher of idealistic philosophy and a great
anti-Cartesian and anti-rationalist, became the object of a new cult.

Positivism began forthwith to be attacked by neo-idealism.
Materialistic approaches to the study of literature and art were
refuted and discredited. Within the Church itself modernism came to
rouse the Italian clergy to the need of a deeper and more modern
culture. Even socialism was brought under the philosophical probe and
criticized like other doctrines for its weaknesses and errors; and
when, in France, George Sorel went beyond the fallacies of the
materialistic theories of the Marxist social-democracy to his theory
of syndicalism, our young Italian socialists turned to him. In Sorel's
ideas they saw two things: first, the end of a hypocritical
"collaborationism" which betrayed both proletariat and nation; and
second, faith in a moral and ideal reality for which it was the
individual's duty to sacrifice himself, and to defend which, even
violence was justified. The anti-parliamentarian spirit and the moral
spirit of syndicalism brought Italian socialists back within the
Mazzinian orbit.

Of great importance, too, was nationalism, a new movement then just
coming to the fore. Our Italian nationalism was less literary and more
political in character than the similar movement in France, because
with us it was attached to the old historic Right which had a long
political tradition. The new nationalism differed from the old Right
in the stress it laid on the idea of "nation"; but it was at one with
the Right in regarding the State as the necessary premise to the
individual rights and values. It was the special achievement of
nationalism to rekindle faith in the nation in Italian hearts, to
arouse the country against parliamentary socialism, and to lead an
open attack on Freemasonry, before which the Italian bourgeoisie was
terrifiedly prostrating itself. Syndicalists, nationalists, idealists
succeeded, between them, in bringing the great majority of Italian
youth back to the spirit of Mazzini.

Official, legal, parliamentary Italy, the Italy that was
anti-Mazzinian and anti-idealistic, stood against all this, finding
its leader in a man of unfailing political intuition, and master as
well of the political mechanism of the country, a man