ate carried out in the XVIII century will be followed in the XX
century by the rescue of the state from the individual. The period of
authority, of social obligations, of "hierarchical" subordination will
succeed the period of individualism, of state feebleness, of
insubordination.

This innovating trend is not and cannot be a return to the Middle
Ages. It is a common but an erroneous belief that the movement,
started by the Reformation and heightened by the French Revolution,
was directed against mediaeval ideas and institutions. Rather than as
a negation, this movement should be looked upon as the development and
fulfillment of the doctrines and practices of the Middle Ages.
Socially and politically considered the Middle Ages wrought
disintegration and anarchy; they were characterized by the gradual
weakening and ultimate extinction of the state, embodied in the Roman
Empire, driven first to the East, then back to France, thence to
Germany, a shadow of its former self; they were marked by the steady
advance of the forces of usurpation, destructive of the state and
reciprocally obnoxious; they bore the imprints of a triumphant
particularism. Therefore the individualistic and anti-social movement
of the XVII and XVIII centuries was not directed against the Middle
Ages, but rather against the restoration of the state by great
national monarchies. If this movement destroyed mediaeval institutions
that had survived the Middle Ages and had been grafted upon the new
states, it was in consequence of the struggle primarily waged against
the state. The spirit of the movement was decidedly mediaeval. The
novelty consisted in the social surroundings in which it operated and
in its relation to new economic developments. The individualism of the
feudal lords, the particularism of the cities and of the corporations
had been replaced by the individualism and the particularism of the
bourgeoisie and of the popular classes.

The Fascist ideology cannot therefore look back to the Middle Ages, of
which it is a complete negation. The Middle Ages spell disintegration;
Fascism is nothing if not sociality. It is if anything the beginning
of the end of the Middle Ages prolonged four centuries beyond the end
ordinarily set for them and revived by the social democratic anarchy
of the past thirty years. If Fascism can be said to look back at all
it is rather in the direction of ancient Rome whose social and
political traditions at the distance