materialistic
positivism of the Eighteenth Century. Anti-positivist, but positive:
neither sceptical nor agnostic, neither pessimistic nor passively
optimistic, as are in general the doctrines (all of them negative)
which place the centre of life outside of man, who by his free will
can and should create his own world for himself.

Fascism wants a man to be active and to be absorbed in action with all
his energies; it wants him to have a manly consciousness of the
difficulties that exist and to be ready to face them. It conceives
life as a struggle, thinking that it is the duty of man to conquer
that life which is really worthy of him: creating in the first place
within himself the (physical, moral, intellectual) instrument with
which to build it.

As for the individual, so for the nation, so for mankind. Hence the
high value of culture in all its forms (art, religion, science) and
the supreme importance of education. Hence also the essential value
of labour, with which man conquers nature and creates the human world
(economic, political, moral, intellectual).

4. Ethical Conception.

This positive conception of life is evidently an ethical conception.
And it comprises the whole reality as well as the human activity which
domineers it. No action is to be removed from the moral sense; nothing
is to be in the world that is divested of the importance which belongs
to it in respect of moral aims. Life, therefore, as the Fascist
conceives it, is serious, austere, religious; entirely balanced in a
world sustained by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. The
Fascist disdains the "easy" life.

5. Religious Conception.

Fascism is a religious conception in which man is considered to be in
the powerful grip of a superior law, with an objective will which
transcends the particular individual and elevates him into a fully
conscious member of a spiritual society. Anyone who has stopped short
at the mere consideration of opportunism in the religious policy of
the Fascist Regime, has failed to understand that Fascism, besides
being a system of government, is also a system of thought.

6. Historical and Realist Conception.

Fascism is an historical conception in which man could not be what he
is without being a factor in the spiritual process to which he
contributes, either in the family sphere or in the social sphere, in
the nation or in history in general to which all nations contribute.
Hence is derived t