lled down the great political structure raised
by Latin genius and put nothing in its place. Anarchy lasted eight
centuries during which time only one institution survived and that a
Roman one--the Catholic Church. But, as soon as the laborious process
of reconstruction was started with the constitution of the great
national states backed by the Roman Church the Protestant Reformation
set in followed by the individualistic currents of the XVII and XVIII
centuries, and the process of disintegration was started anew. This
anti-state tendency was the expression of the Germanic spirit and it
therefore became predominant among the Germanic peoples and wherever
Germanism had left a deep imprint even if afterward superficially
covered by a veneer of Latin culture. It is true that Marsilius from
Padua is an Italian writing for Ludwig the Bavarian, but the other
writers who in the XIV century appear as forerunners of the liberal
doctrines are not Italians: Occam and Wycliff are English; Oresme is
French. Among the advocates of individualism in the XVI century who
prepared the way for the triumph of the doctrines of natural law in
the subsequent centuries, Hotman and Languet are French, Buchanan is
Scotch. Of the great authorities of natural law, Grotius and Spinosa
are Dutch; Locke is English; l'Abbe de St. Pierre, Montesquieu,
d'Argenson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and the encyclopaedists are
French; Althusius, Pufendorf, Kant, Fichte are German.

Italy took no part in the rise and development of the doctrines of
natural law. Only in the XIX century did she evince a tardy interest
in these doctrines, just as she tardily contributed to them at the
dose of the XVIII century through the works of Beccaria and Filangeri.

While therefore in other countries such as France, England, Germany,
and Holland, the general tradition in the social and political
sciences worked in behalf of anti-state individualism, and therefore
of liberal and democratic doctrines, Italy, on the other hand, clung
to the powerful legacy of its past in virtue of which she proclaims
the rights of the state, the preeminence of its authority, and the
superiority of its ends. The very fact that the Italian political
doctrine in the Middle Ages linked itself with the great political
writers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, who in a different manner
but with an equal firmness advocated a strong state and the
subordination of individuals to it, is a sufficient ind